


Nightcall

by voxane



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: A twist on Ronan's self growth and acceptance, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I promise you with all my heart this will end on a happy note, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Rape Recovery, The assualt is a plot point and not meant be sexy, and touching friendship moments, no come back I mean it, there's also a cool car race, trust me - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-08-10 06:54:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20131183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxane/pseuds/voxane
Summary: There were two universal truths to Ronan Lynch - He hated his phone, and he couldn’t fucking sleep. Kavinsky took advantage of both of those things. And after 2 or 6 beers fighting with Kavinsky was fun, and racing him sounded like more fun. He was high on adrenaline and moving so fast he didn’t see the warning signs.Ronan didn’t think. He grabbed his keys, and he drove.Updates every other Sunday!





	1. I'm Giving You a Night Call to Tell You How I Feel

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hello - First fic in a new fandom and it's a little dark! I related to Ronan A LOT throughout the books, so I kinda wanted to put him in the same pressure cooker that I've been trapped it. A little cathartic therapy for yours truly. That being said there is a mention of rape in this story, it is not graphic, played for shock value or meant to be fetishized or sexy in any way. This is a story about a self-destructive man dealing with tragedy and overcoming hardship. I hope it doesn't upset anyone and I promise blue skies are ahead for him!
> 
> ALSO I made a super cool playlist to go with it! [Please check it out!](https://open.spotify.com/user/1211290969/playlist/0OmEP7N6D6xiXwpzwH3ofG?si=c_cIgx1OT3CpxQDnO7dNgg)

Ronan Lynch hated his phone. 

He hated that it was a ball chained to his pocket, and he hated feeling the weight of unread texts from Gansey nagging him to go to school, or every _ unread _ text of Declan nagging him about whatever was up his ass that day. The only two people Ronan gave the time of day to cellularly, were an angel and devil. He’d always respond to Matthew’s memes with whatever his favorite emoji was that week, which Ronan texted enough to know the ever changing rotation. And if it wasn’t Matthew he was texting, it meant Ronan was getting into fights with Joseph Kavinsky. Fights that dragged out and spread like a breadcrumb trail leading to his BMW and through Henrietta country roads at breakneck speeds.

Both parties didn’t coexist in Ronan’s limited screen time, they were two separate worlds with no overlapping edges. He would make plans with Matthew for Saturday lunches or after school ice cream, leaving him safely nestled behind Aglionby’s wrought iron gates before the sun burned the sky to black.  
  
Ronan only gave Kavinsky the satisfaction under the blanket of 2 am where it was harder to see if the decision you made was as bad as it seemed, and there was little else to distract you aside from cicada’s weeping for the summer heat.  
  
He found himself even bothering with Kavinsky trapped in the white noise hum of Monmouth at hours where the whole world seemed to be asleep. He was the only man alive, alone under scattered starlight dripping through his loft window over the tawdry kingdom of his mess.  
  
Until Kavinsky reminded him he was breathing the very same air.

After 2 or 6 beers, fighting with Kavinsky was _fun. _He’d throw jabs at the prick in typo rich sentence fragments until his eyes stung and he couldn’t keep his body upright. Sometimes all it took a cruel name and a location and Ronan was out the door with his keys clenched in a fist so tight the teeth left imprints in his palm. He couldn’t even start to care who he woke up with the roar of the beamers engine. Gansey always forgot about the rude awakening, if he was even asleep, much more concerned with _Where have you been, it’s been almost 24_ _hours_ or _You can’t keep missing school _or _Something something stuffy dead Welsh fuck. _Gansey was covenant blood to Ronan, but his one-track mind was one of many unattractive qualities about the dude. 

So at 1:22 am, with a single beer roiling in his gut and sleeplessness making his head foggy, Kavinsky’s arguments were particularly compelling.  
  
_ Hey, Princess, will daddy let you out to play or do you have the night booked to see if Dick-Three can still get it up for you? _

The phones glow was the jab of a knife. Ronan flinched, wounded. A strained croak crackled through the room as a startled Chainsaw ruffled her feathers from her resting form. She squinted at him as she waddled herself to the other side of her cage and hid under her wing.

She wasn’t enough to tear Ronan’s eyes away from his screen, staring at it far longer than it’d take anyone to ingest the words on the screen. The letters were an after burn in his out of focus vision, like they were sinking through the phone screen. He blinked a couple of times, but they only scrambled themselves to say the same thing in different ways until his phone went dim and left nothing but a blue or brown afterburn that skipped across the sea of brick wall towering to wood rafters.

Somewhere, Ronan thought he heard Declan or Gansey’s voice- maybe it was Adam’s drawl or his own echo bouncing off the high ceilings of Monmouth. It told him to forget Kavinsky, he’s not worth the energy, to go to sleep. 

He thought, maybe. 

The message was muffled by rifling through his mental Rolodex of Kavinsky specific insults, but with his head heavy and his brain rattling around like a ping pong ball he couldn’t pinpoint anything remotely clever other than a Madlib of curse words that lost its impact in practice. His brain deteriorated any protective film of rationality to his thoughts, so it was either that or something dangerously direct.  
  
Fuck it, let’s get to the good part.  
  
Ronan grabbed his phone and preemptively squinted at the blinding glow and tapped out a message before he could even begin to think about if it was a good idea or not, because he knew it wasn’t.

_ where K _

_ Aw, you’re so much sweeter when you’re not playin hard to get. Meet me at the end of Montgomery, you always fuck up the last turn. _

_ And you’re sweeter when you shut your mouth and chase my tail lights tired ass jersey trash junkie _

_ You confuse me for my mother. Save it for the streets, spitfire ;) _

_  
_ _ Spitfire is a plane retard _

Ronan sniffed. The fall night air, crisp and cold, slithered its way through Monmouth's towering windows. He followed it’s trail to tired trees swinging right outside. The wind forced their half-full branches one way or another, pulling leaves up into the night sky. Ronan rose with them, stretching his arms up with a grunt, waking Chainsaw. She uncurled herself from the corner of her cage, cocking her head at him as if he were a crumb of breakfast pastry she wasn't sure she’d get scolded for pecking at.

“Kerah?” It was a pathetic croak of a noise, but Ronan hissed a _ shh _ at her anyways.  
  
“You’re gonna wake Gansey, dipshit. I’ll be back before breakfast.” Ronan plucked a leather jacket from one of his anthill colony piles of clothes across his room, shrugging it over his shoulders. He shoved a hand down his jeans to adjust himself, and Chainsaw bristled. “Like it’s nothing you haven’t seen before. Go back to sleep.”  
  
She deflated in a sad pile of oil black looking a lot like the wadded up jacket on Ronan’s floor, dejected and forgotten. Ronan’s lips twitched and his stomach flipped, newly nauseous. He gnawed at the end of his bracelet already worried out of shape with years of teeth marks. His phone buzzed to life, rattling against his hip bone, and he turned on his heel without giving it the time of day. What was the fucking point when he could insult Kavinsky in person, and actually see his snarl and thick angry, sharply angled into wayfarers.  
  
Ronan didn’t think. He grabbed his keys, and he drove.

* * *

Kavinsky, for all intents and purposes, looked like shit. He was an artificial boy, with polos always retail bright, snapbacks too crispy, and spray-can-tan behind his dumb as fuck Ray-Bans. 

But he had a wild smile behind the wheel of his Evo, and it dropped into Ronan’s stomach like mentos into diet coke until he had nothing but fizzy jetsam pumping through his veins. Ronan tapped his fingers against the wheel to the beat of a song that was playing double time in his memory, teeth pressed into his tongue until he tasted blood.  
  
“Princess, you made me wait.” Kavinsky’s tone was sanded down to a sharp point. Ronan couldn’t tell if it was brandished at him, or just for show. “I was hoping Daddy was gonna lend you the Camaro, his leash on you is tighter than I thought.”  
  
Ronan’s smirk crept up his face like the summer ivy over Monmouth, now so brittle a season past it’s prime that an afternoon breeze could tear it apart.  
  
“Don’t need it. I’ve beaten you just like this more times than I can count.”  
  
“You’re lucky you’re pretty ‘cause Dick ain’t keepin you for your brains if you’re struggling to count past 3.” Kavinsky turned his head to the dash, red LEDs mirrored back and warped into elongated shapes that made him look like a Halloween caricature of a spider, face draped in nighttime shadow. A god damn ghoul, like something out of his fucking dreams.  
  
Ronan ran his tongue over his teeth, the metallic tang of blood hot on his tongue.  
  
“Let’s fucking go, K.”  
  
He twisted his radio knob as far as it could, his speakers thrumming a pounding baseline that vibrated right down his spine. He shivered, like the music was pumping blood through his heart. Ronan threw a glance to him, boredom pressed out of shape from mania.  
  
Kavinsky had a cocaine smile. 

“See you at the finish line, Baby.”  
  
Then there was nothing but a wind tunnel of bright lights stretched by speed into ribbon-like beams in all of Ronan’s favorite colors.The engine roared a proud sound that he wanted to match in screams that’d leave his throat torn and sore. Even with the October chill, his palms were slick against the leather of the steering wheel, and sweat pooled at the back of his neck. Raging synths wailed and all Ronan wanted was faster, higher, MORE. 

He could barely see the Evo, right beside him, screaming in the same way. They might’ve harmonized in sound, but there was something different that separated him from Kavinsky. It wasn’t the fucking cars, or the engine, or any top-end machinery that made the difference. Yeah, Kavinsky could drive.

But Ronan could fucking fly. 

And he did. 

He flew through strobing stars and flickering neon ‘closed’ signs, the BMW responding to every finessed twitch of his hands, taking every corner whip crack sharp. He wasn’t giving Kavinsky any sort of edge to drift past him. 

_ Watch me. _  
_  
See ME._

They snaked down the mountain in the blink of an eye, probably. It could’ve been seconds or hours to Ronan. There was one last stretch of main road before it melted into backwoods dirt and gravel. Ronan threw his whole body, boiling and carbonated, into that final mile. He wanted to grind as much salt into Kavinsky’s wound of a loss, and show him how it’s mother fucking done.  
  
The BMW skid elastically tail light into a goddamn tree and Ronan tore open the door, whipped his jacket off and howled at the sky. Kavinsky’s headlights became a spotlight, or a camera flash so he could see Ronan, crude and victorious, without the night hiding the spark in his firecracker eyes.

* * *

Ronan stuffed his jacket in the car. He felt high and weightless from being unshielded, even if the bite of cold had every hair of his standing on end. He grasped around for one of the loose tallboys that he knew had rolled under the passenger seat. The aluminum felt like a medal in his hand. He ripped the tab off the beer, not-quite-cold but a stark contrast to Ronan’s still sweating hands. Beer poured down his face and onto his shirt, and Ronan couldn’t even try to give a shit. Cold and bubbly, it slid down his throat and pooled in his stomach and made him feel _ full. _He drained it without even a breath, and crushed the empty can with his bare hand before tossing it aside. He didn’t notice he’d cut himself on the aluminum until he went to see if he had another rattling around in his car, and the thin rivers of blood snaked down his hand black under the dim dome lights. 

“What the fuck. Miller, Lynch? You poor or something?” Kavinsky leaned against his Evo, headlights still on and pointed at Ronan.  
  
“It’s the champagne of beers.” Ronan sneered, squinting at Kavinsky through the light, he had to hold the can over his eyes as a makeshift visor to discern his form.“Turn off your god damn lights, _ I’m _ not a grade-A douchebag so I don’t wear sunglasses at 2 in the fucking morning.”  
  
“Not a fuckin a chance. I’m not looking to get snuck up on. Get in the car, and I’ll get you a beer more suited to a winner.”  
  
Ronan’s heart was a hot air balloon out of control, flames in his gut shoving it up into his lungs. Ronan Lynch, _ winner. _Dreamer king of the Henrietta streets, with Kavinsky offering tribute.

He could get fucking _ used _ to this.

So he slid into the passenger side of the Evo, kicking the seat back so he could stretch his legs. Kavinsky played his shitty Bulgarian rock garbage in crystal clarity that no car speaker could muster. It was probably the only imperfection on the carbon copy vehicle. Ronan stifled a shiver as he closed the door. It was frigid in Kavinsky’s car, more like winter than fall air outside. 

“I’m gonna freeze my tits off, What are you, cold blooded?” Ronan whined, but the bite of cold on the membrane of his nose sent an electric jolt down his spine. 

“Don’t be a little bitch.” Kavinsky shoved a can of beer into Ronan’s cheek, shockingly colder, he couldn’t help but flinch. “I got it special for you. Morris brought it back from New Haven for the last party, they even named it after you.” 

The can was a marvelous orange, like The Pig, with some acid trip of a waterfowl’s wings spread across in bright blues and greens. A proud Heron, in a wide taunting stance, beak ajar and mocking.   
  
“Big Cranky.” Ronan read aloud, and Kavinsky laughed uproariously until he couldn’t breathe. Ronan wondered if there were more layers to the joke, or if Kavinsky managed to get some rails in before he invited him here. Whatever. He fucking needed the beer if he was going to deal with this tonight. He drained it just as fast as his Miller, and it bit back with thrice the teeth. This wasn’t the kind of beer you were supposed to chug, this was the kind of beer Aglionbros cluck their tongues to talk about _ earthy notes _ and other too pretentious garbage for something you were supposed to get drunk on. Ronan grabbed another, half spitefully, just for the high of doing it wrong.  
  
“Man, the way you drink. You should come to my parties, you’d love it.” Kavinsky popped open his own can, nursing it as he stared out past the dashboard to the horizon line laced with twisted, naked tree branches. 

“You hang out with dickbags. Pass.” Ronan shifted to kick up his feet on the dashboard, looking at Kavinsky like a cat stalking prey to see if he’d say anything about it. Kavinsky tilted back his beer can and flashed him a smile, sharp and dangerous, full of shark’s teeth. 

Sharks were rarely prey.  
  
“You just need to loosen up, then the company don’t matter so much. I can get you some pretty little happy pills, you’ll make tons of friends. You’re already infamous in my pack. Imagine - Ronan Lynch, belle of the ball. For once you wouldn’t be anyone's side kick.”  
  
Ronan groaned. Friends. The last thing he needed was a gaggle of fuck boy cavemen to cheer him on whenever he did a god damn thing. The kind of guys who needed that attention were -  
  
Well, Kavinsky.  
  
Ronan grabbed the third beer, head buzzing and it sounded like alarm bells or hornets. Maybe some awful combination of the two he dreamt once and stomped out, wires and guts glued to the bottom of his boots. He didn’t know why they were screaming, but couldn't stand it and drowned the sound in more drink.  
  
“Those things will knock you on your ass, Lynch. It packs more of a punch than a Miller High Life.” For someone who had an affinity for doing rails of coke fast enough to give a man whiplash, Kavinsky drank his beer like he had all the time in the world. “You already won the race, you can slow the fuck down.”  
  
Ronan flared his nostrils like the beer smelled of something much more foul than hops. 

Ronan _ lived _ at breakneck speed, he thought Kavinsky got that. He thought he knew how scary it was to slow down, how all the shit you left behind could catch up to you and eat you alive. No one understood that terror, not Gansey or even Adam. But Ronan thought Kavinsky did.  
  
“Fuck you, Kavinsky.” He muttered into his beer. He wanted to crush the can and pretend they were his thoughts. Crumple them up and toss them into the forest and only have a world just for the two of them in Kavinsky’s car and the weightlessness of beer to keep him afloat.  
  
Kavinsky took off his sunglasses, and placed them on the dash and killed his headlights. There was nothing left but a red-orange glow from the dash lights, and numbers counting down to sunrise on the clock radio. It filled in the edges of Kavinsky’s cheekbones, carved sharp. He looked almost handsome, with his shark tooth grin close enough that Ronan could count his eyelashes.  
  
“You’d like that, Lynch.” The words were sloe gin, dripping over his lips. Something dangerous and sweet that most people couldn’t resist but regretted it in the morning. He dropped his voice lower, impossibly quiet. “You’d like that a lot.”  
  
Ronan wasn’t surprised, really, when Kavinsky kissed him. He was the biggest closet case in all of Henrietta. What surprised him was that he didn’t do anything. He let Kavsinky’s hands slide under his shirt without as much as a startled or protesting noise. His nerves were liquor slow, and his brain wasn’t firing to his hands fast enough. Even if he did, he wasn't sure what he was going to do with them. He could feel his being slipping away from himself, and he couldn’t begin to grasp at it. It wasn’t like a dream, where he could see one of many Ronans acting out one of many possibilities. This was soul sans body. Or he was the puppeteer to a marionette Ronan, but somebody snipped his strings and he pinocchio’d the fuck out of there. Everything was getting soft at edges, round and blurry, and Ronan thought he might be talking, but he wasn’t so sure.  
  
He was sure, however, he never once said no. 

* * *

Adam Parrish didn’t have a phone. 

He had to guess it was almost 3 am by the time he left Boyd’s garage. He didn’t have satellites to tell him as such in bright, digital numbers. Just his watch, which had been slowly falling out of time, dragging the seconds slower and slower until it was noticeably wrong He eyed Gansey’s WOLF winder, always on the left back corner of his desk, but Adam didn’t need it. He could figure out how far behind it was- 2 minutes, 30 seconds, almost. Adam would be happy when it finally got to 3 since it’d be so much easier to gauge. 

So by his calculations, it was about 3:18 and a half, give or take, when he spotted Ronan’s BMW looking no more than a shadow against the inky black forest behind it.  
  
He hit the brakes on his bike, let his right foot fall to the pavement, and assessed. 

Adam tried to remain pragmatic and ignore how his hands were shaking around his handlebars and his heart was in the pit of his stomach. He ran through all the reasons Ronan would be out and used all of his remaining will power to shoo away the thought he was staring at a crime scene. 

  
He leaned the bicycle against the nearest tree and crept towards the car, light on the balls of his feet, like a cougar stalking an unsuspecting deer but feared its antlers. Or like he got home from school on a rare day off, and he didn’t want to wake his father passed out and face down on the couch.  
  
It was a different flavor of fear, this particular sneaking around. It had the same notes of defensiveness that caused him to curl his fists tight, ready to cover his face if need be. But there was acid burning in the back of his throat that made his fear of broken bones or bruises seem trivial, which was frightening in and of itself.  
  
“Ronan?” He asked, voice muffled with worry. No one called back to him, but there was a sudden _ thump _ that drew his attention to one of Ronan’s bare feet sticking out the open back seat. Adam’s heart plummeted into his chest like a skydiver with a deathwish. He crept up fast as he could stay silent, and held his breath as he forced himself to peer into the car, even with the emotional resistance pulling him the other way.  
  
Adam was never more thankful, for the lightless roads of Henrietta. He took back every time he cursed every surprise rock of bump he’d hit masked by the night, and he’d never complain about it ever again. The film of darkness between him and Ronan’s catatonic body was the only thing that kept his dinner firmly in his stomach instead of splattered all over forest dirt.  
  
Ronan looked like a corpse.  
  
Adam’s first thought was to grab his wrist, check his pulse, but his hands stayed shaking at his sides. He didn’t feel like he could touch Ronan, or should. Not with his jeans pushed to his ankles, and splatter paint bruises and marks covering his skin. He swallowed and leaned into the car, nearly choking on a gag. It smelled like piss and death, and it was all the more reason to make sure Ronan was breathing. Adam shoved his crew neck undershirt over his nose and flipped Ronan with as much measured haste and gentleness as he could math out in the second he had, and rolled up a vomit crusted sleeve to get two fingers on the underside of his wrist.  
  
Adam exhaled, leaving his fingers on Ronan’s wrist to feel his heartbeat vibrate through his body just a few more times.  
  
“Ronan? Ronan, you awake?” He knew that Ronan couldn’t hear him, even without the T shirt filter. He asked again just for hopeful thinking, pressing a hand against his shoulder and jostling him.  
  
Ronan groaned, a gargle almost, head lolling ragdoll loose against the door handle. Adam cradled his head, hoping his didn’t concuss himself, and leaned him onto his side so he at least wouldn’t choke on his own vomit.  
  
“C’mon Ronan, talk to me, I need to know your okay.” Adam knew it was a stupid thing to say out loud and was almost glad Ronan wouldn’t remember it. He wished Ronan wouldn’t remember any of this. Adam was first hand experience that fate wasn’t quite so kind. He and Ronan had that in common.  
  
“Gansey...” the words came out a raw, pathetic plea. Like Adam had the words from Ronan’s hands, and Ronan was grasping them like a child to a security blanket. If Adam couldn’t see Ronan’s lifeless, vomit frosted face he’d say it sounded like he was crying. 

He pursed his lips and tried to wriggle Ronan’s pants over his hips. He didn’t cringe even though the boxers were damp underneath his fingers, and he didn’t wince even though Ronan’s dick was an angry shade of red that made his own junk flinch in sympathy. 

He dug through the sticky pockets to unearth the BMW keys, and awkwardly wrapped a seatbelt around his body. It was more for his own peace of mind than anything practical, or even anything truly safe. Like a two inch strap of polyester webbing could protect Ronan’s body or mind or heart at this point. What more pain could he go through in one night? But god damn if Adam was going to be responsible for even an ounce of it.  
  
He shut the door, slid into the front seat of the BMW, and left his bike behind. 


	2. I Want to Drive You Through the Night, Down the Hills

Ronan never hated his phone more as it shrieked at him 7 in the goddamn morning.    
  
He felt like he had survived a car crash, and he didn’t have the energy to unpack how that was a legitimate possibility. His head felt too big, bloated and stressing the seams of his skull. He really wouldn’t have minded if it burst and it just ended there; anything could be better than this pain. It wasn’t just his head, his stomach felt upside-fucking-down - which he didn’t know was something he could even feel. Full and empty at the same time, and like every organ was twisted the wrong way. He could feel aches and pains in every bone and muscle in his body just from existing as if his entire body was one giant bruise.

Not to mention his fucking asshole burned like he’d been shitting hot coals.

Ronan grasped for his phone with screwed his eyes shut, and tried not to think about how he had sex with Kavinsky. The tips of his fingers raked at dry unfinished wood, and he pulled back as fast as his neurons would allow as if he had touched fire. He inhaled through his nose and did everything he could push himself to an almost upright position. Once he felt his head stop spinning, he cracked open his eyes.    
  
He wasn’t at fucking Monmouth.    
  
He blinked a couple of times and tried to focus on  _ anything _ that could fill in a blank of what the fuck was going on. He rested his hands on the rigid cramped twin mattress, too short for him that his feet dangled off the side, and let the too crisp polyester sheet crumple down on him. Ronan didn’t have a shirt on, that might have been the only normal thing. He was definitely a ‘strip whatever you’re wearing and sleep in your boxers’ kinda guy, but the boxers he had now were stretched as far as the fibers would allow over his thighs and barely kept his dick in. They were way too small to be his own.   
  
His phone finally stopped wailing, and Ronan followed the ringing echoing in his head to see Adam Parrish in his ill-fitting and threadbare Aglionby sweater, khakis cuffed so they didn’t drag.   
  
Ronan was at St. Agnes. His head was flooded with a deluge of questions, and he truly didn’t want to open Pandora’s Box when he was too familiar with the horrors inside. Adam, even dwarfed in his frumpy uniform, stood threatening like a bouncer armed with pursed lips and daggers for eyes. He picked up Ronan’s phone from his desk and held it out, and it felt like a trap. Ronan kept purposeful eye contact with him, to prove he wasn’t scared shitless. Or at least pretend he wasn’t.   
  
“Gansey called. I didn’t look through it or anything. I just saw the missed calls on your lock screen,” Adam explained, each word sharp with consonants that murdered any hint of his Henrietta drawl. “I didn’t bring you home, or to a hospital, because I wasn’t sure what you wanted to do. I don’t think anything’s broken, and you puked a lot so...” Adam’s stern facade was cracking under the worried his lip suffering between his teeth. Ronan only then noticed how heavy the bags under his eyes were.   
  
“Is the BMW okay?” Ronan rasped with a cough. He didn’t realize his throat was scraped so raw.    
  
“Jesus, Ronan.” Adam deflated, his backpack sliding off his shoulder into a defeated pile on the floor. “I thought you were dead and you're asking about your car?” Adam scrunched his face taut with so many emotions before it melted into something between sympathy and resignation. He ran a hand through his combed curls, mussing into a brand new bed head.   
  
“I cleaned the car last night. I,” he stopped, sucking in a sharp breath. “I couldn’t sleep. Once I knew you were, were- good. I just had to keep busy.”   
  
Ronan wanted to ask if it was in one piece, but if Adam was playing carwash for him he clearly had nothing to worry about. Well, other than Adam looking like he was in the middle of a tug of war between anger and pity with Ronan at the center, and it was tearing him in half. He couldn’t quantify how the stretch on his limbs was affecting him, much less know how to defend against it. Ronan was too tired for feelings like anger, or the kind of defensive guilt he wore like spiked armor. He just laid back down, for the sake of his head and body- mostly so he didn’t have to look at Adam anymore.    
  
“Thanks,” Ronan said, automated.    
  
“It’s nothin- Nothing, Ronan.” Adam cleared his throat. “After what you’d been through, it’s the least I could do.”    
  
Ronan wanted to snarl and scream Adam’s own paraphrased words back into his face about being some god damn charity case. Instead, he just squeezed his eyes shut so hard he thought his head might pop, and exhaled.   
  
“It wasn’t a big deal.” Ronan’s voice cracked, and he wished he could sink into Adam’s mattress.    
  
Adam laughed, hot acid, and Ronan’s heart stopped at the sound.    
  
“Not a big deal? Ronan, I spent all night taking care of you, you were-" Adam gulped, his brows furrowed in a maze of anger Ronan couldn’t find the end to. He was cornered in a dead end with nothing between him and the awful word he was worried was sheathed behind Adam's lips.    
  
“Fuck, no, I’m sorry. Like,” Ronan sat up and immediately regretted moving so fast, bile churned in his stomach like an out of control blender. Adam walked over, to nudge a grimy plastic wastebasket over so he could empty his rioting gullet. He wondered if Adam flinched, as he hacked up highlighter yellow bile, or maybe he'd seen enough that it no longer phased him.   
  
“I’m sorry I fucked up your night,” Ronan said the words as fast as possible, mashing the syllables like they were already digested and he had to vomit them out too. It was always hard to say it. It was even harder when he meant it. “But I’m okay, I was racing. Drinking. I would’ve been fine.”    
  
Adam frowned at Ronan with a perplexed silence like he just spoke an entirely different language. It made Ronan feel hot and small, like pleading beneath a pedestaled Judge. He couldn’t stand it for a minute longer.    
  
“Gimme my phone. I need to let Gansey know I’m alive before he sends out the fucking bloodhounds.”    
  
Adam pried his eyes away from Ronan to hand him his phone. Without being assessed like a cuffed criminal, or some avant garde art piece sculpted from sheer misery - could breathe again.    
  
“I won’t tell him anything,” Adam said, small. Frail. Ronan nearly snapped his phone in half for making Adam Parrish of all people feel  _ small _ . “I didn’t want him to have to see you like that.”    
  
Ronan ignored how Adam continued to find new and innovative ways to make him feel awful about himself and thumbed through the rollercoaster ride of Ganseys texts.

_ Ronan if I don’t hear from you by the time school starts I’m taking matters into my own hands. _

_ I just need to know you’re okay _

_ Call me _

_ Ronan I know you don’t want me in your business but Kavinsky’s gone too far _

_ Please let me know where you are I’ll come get you _

_ Ronan are you hurt _

_ Do you need me? _

Ronan’s stomach dropped. He mashed out an  _ I’m fine. _ Before he scrolled earlier in the night until he found exactly what spurred Gansey’s panic. And well, fuck if Ronan wasn’t a little panicked too.   
  
And it was him in the picture.   
  
_ Come get your whore, Dick _

Ronan stared at the image much longer than was comfortable. So, at all. But couldn’t take his eyes off it like there was a hidden message if he looked in the right spot, like he’d figure out why he was so fucked up if he stared at Kavinsky’s cum dripping out of his asshole long enough. 

Turns out his ass wasn’t a fucking magic 8 ball.

He let the phone slide out of his hand and flopped back onto the bed with an arm draped over his eyes.

“Doesn’t matter. He already has.” Ronan couldn’t even find it in himself to sound disappointed, voice cold and clinical like he was giving himself his own terminal diagnosis.    
  
“What?”    
  
Adam rarely asked, ‘what?’. Sometimes ‘why?’ or ‘how?’, the kind of questions that made him absentmindedly chew on his pencil as he started unknotting the puzzle in his mind. ‘What?’ was a question for the unobservant or the unmotivated, and Adam was the antithesis of both concepts. Ronan was hot again, under Adam’s question mark eyes.

“K’s an asshole.” Ronan watched Adam mouth the letter, pondering the taste of it before it hit his tongue all at once, bitter and rotten.

“Kavinsky did this to you,” Adam said it; he didn’t ask it. 

He couldn’t look Adam in the eyes, just in case that shine of them was something remotely close to pity. Ronan hadn’t felt so small in some time. Not since he was actually quite small, and Declan would shake him awake and yell ‘ _ You messed up, Ronan!’ _ already playing the CEO on damage control. He would be paralyzed in bed and hated that he couldn’t say or do anything to make Declan  _ shut UP _ . He felt a lot like that now, except he had his mouth and hands and the voice screaming at him was his own instead of Declan’s.

  
“It’s not like that,” Ronan said.  _ I did this to me _ , he kept to himself. “You should head to school.”    
  
If Adam needed any more evidence that Ronan Lynch was not well, that sealed the deal.    
  
“I'm guessin' you’re not coming?” Adam drawled, a country crooner singing a sad song.    
  
“Fuck no. I can barely sit up.” Ronan turned away, tucking himself against grey oak of aged church walls. He knew Adam would wilt at the words and Ronan had enough to chew on without Adam’s sunken in downcast eyes, shiny with a fresh layer of disappointment.    
  


“Well, I’m working after school. Gansey’s bringing me to the garage. It’ll probably close to midnight after walking home- but you’re welcome to stay as long as you need.” 

  
Ronan winced at Adam’s deflated tone   
  
“Yeah. I’ll...As soon as I’m done puking I’ll fuck off.”    
  
Adam hummed in acknowledgment and didn’t say anything as he left, closing the door with a whining squeal, and leaving Ronan alone.   
  
Again.   


* * *

Of course Richard Gansey the Third had a cell phone.

He used his phone like an artist used a chisel, or a doctor used a scalpel. It was a tool of precision, apps neatly arranged and all calendars synced to play the efficient digital secretary. 

Which is why he knew he had nothing conflicting his lunch, and Adam had a free period after, so they could go find a quiet place to eat. And talk. 

Because they absolutely had to talk. 

Gansey stood by Adam’s locker, trying not to act like a high alert meerkat as he waited for him to wander from his just-released history class. He flinched as spotted him down the hall, so much for playing it cool, and his heart sank at Adam’s downcast face. He wondered if Adam had his own tragedy last night. He looked scrawny in his uniform. Yes, the sweater had always been a size too large for him, but he’d cuff the sleeves, and tuck it in, and make sure everything was  _ just so _ . Today, the uniform wore the boy rather than the other around. Adam was drowning in navy blue, and the bags under his eyes were in a similar shade. 

The moment Adam was close enough Gansey huddled into him, arms on his shoulders and turned them toward the wall to have the facade of privacy in the bustling hallway.

“Parrish, you look ragged, are you alright?” Gansey kept his tone soft and measured, but puffs of breath between each word gave away his unease.    
  
“Didn’t sleep,” Adam mumbled, rubbing his eyes with the back of his sleeve that draped to his palm. “I’m fine.” He added, an afterthought.   
  
Gansey sighed, pulling back and clapping Adam on the shoulder. “Let’s get you a coffee then, I was hoping to have a private conversation with you. It’s...rather troubling, and requires immediate action.” It felt unkind to speak of Ronan with his public speaking timbre and diplomatic vocabulary, but it was far less unkind to flay his feelings in the halls of his least favorite place for all of his least favorite people to see. 

“I was the one who found Ronan last night,” Adam stated, looking through him. Which was all as well, because Gansey felt shot through the heart.    
  
“Christ.” Gansey didn’t even realize he lifted a hand to cradle the side of his face. “Let’s find somewhere a little more private. We’ll swing by Zesty’s to grab some food. And a coffee, god you need a coffee, you look like Noah.”    
  
“Gansey,” Adam warned, or whined. It was hard to tell with a voice worn so paper thin.

  
“Sorry, sorry. Let’s hurry.”    
  
They paced through the halls at ‘business speed’, fast enough that Gansey could part the seas of student’s with presence alone, but not so fast it’d cause a disruption. It must’ve been sheer momentum that kept them at the speed even outside of Algionby’s stony walls. They moved as if someone, or something, gave them chase but they didn’t want anyone else to know about. They hustled across the parking lot, weaving through the sports cars glittering across the asphalt to The Pig - a proud beaconing traffic cone tucked in the very back. To Gansey, the safety orange of his beloved car was comforting. He hoped Adam didn’t think the color was trying to warn them of danger. 

Gansey slid his key into the lock even though his eyes were fixed on the horizon line. He was running on autopilot and it was evident in how He turned the engine, locked the doors without a single conscious thought about it. His hand laid ready on the gear shift- but it felt hard to drive. He couldn’t put his finger on it. The veins on his hand pulsed from gripping the steering wheel so tight until something inside of him popped, and he deflated back into the driver’s seat with his shoulders slumped. Gansey closed his eyes and let out some deep, measured breathes using the droning engine as a metronome.    
  
“Is...he okay, Adam?” Gansey asked, voice hoarse with boyish uncertainty that only existed behind locked doors and rolled up windows.    
  
Adam winced, which in turn made himself mimic the face out of empathy. Gansey knew Adam understood what he meant by ‘okay’. Ronan often said he was  _ ‘fine’ _ . But a Ronan _ fine  _ meant he was upright, his car ran, and he had all his organs still inside his body. He had a baseline insurance policy on himself that didn’t cover cracks or dents or mental trauma. 

“I dunno, Gansey.” Adam slumped in his seat, matching Gansey shot for shot in vulnerability. 

“Kavinsky did it.”    
  
“I know,” Gansey said. He sat up back poised and tone diplomatic. If they started playing emotional chicken they’d be in this car until one of them started a fight, and then they’d never eat. So Gansey backed down and found the wherewithal to pull out of Aglionby. He didn’t say a word, and the crunching of delicate fall leaves beneath his tires sounded so much more murderous without any noise pollution.    
  
“Why does Ronan hang out with him?” Adam crossed his legs briskly, eyes on Gansey even those his were fixed on the road. “He’s an asshole.”    
  
“Well,” Gansey grit his teeth, holding a grimace for a moment thinking about Adam’s reaction. “Ronan’s an asshole, too.”   
  
“But that’s  _ different. _ ” Adam’s tone was already rising, and his vowels getting softer and consonants sharper. “Ronan’s a troublemaker. Kavinsky’s a criminal.”    
  
“Underage drinking is a crime. Having a forged ID is a crime, drinki-”    
  
“Gansey! You know what I mean!” Adam was outright yelling now, fists balled into the crease of Khakis.    
  
“I know.” He breathed in hard through his nose, counted to 10 in his head to keep his temper. Gansey had the entire previous night to be mad at Kavinsky - Perhaps Adam didn’t give himself that luxury. Gansey had paced, and called, and paced, and knocked over books, and called and paced and woke up slumped against Ronan's bedroom door. He wanted to throttle Kavinsky, too. But Ronan chose this and went running to Kavinsky week after week.    
  
And now, Adam was yelling at him. A bomb of fury meant for Kavinsky, but Gansey getting a faceful of shrapnel anyways. 

He couldn’t let his anger for Kavinsky smear into his anger for Ronan, or even his anger for Adam. They were all different shades of angry for different colored misdeeds, and his friends didn't deserve the muddy ilk Kavinsky bled into it. 

So Gansey counted, and he breathed. 

“I’ve told him he’s different, too. I’m just telling you how Ronan sees it.” 

“Fucking hell,” Adam unfurled again, all the potential energy in him evaporated, leaving nothing but a droopy frown on his face. “He’s nothing like Kavinsky.”    
  
Gansey knew that. Gansey knew that more than anyone involved. He had a photo perfect image of Ronan with a carefree smile and untamed curls watching the stars from the back of a pickup truck he never saw anyone actually drive. Ronan may have tattooed armor, but he knew that boy, part of him, was still in his core. Half dressed trees rolled past them as they cruised along the main drag. He wished it could so easy to bare yourself like the autumn trees, expected and mundane. Humans had a few more layers than trees, and he supposed that’s what made them so intriguing. 

“Ronan thinks he’s a broken toy. Kavinsky celebrates his damage. His elaborate parties and expensive drugs make it look very glamorous.” Gansey voice sounded a lot like his turn signal as he pulled off the road and into the Zesty’s drive through. He didn’t want to sound so droning and monotonous, but he studied and fret over Ronan-Kavinsky situation when things weren’t quite so dire. He was prepared for this particular tragedy, and not unacquainted with the concept as a whole.    
  
“He’s not the only one with problems,” Adam glowered, lowering his voice as Gansey rolled down the window and leaned out the car to give an award winning smile to the voice box. He didn’t even have the fight to stop Gansey from ordering for him. (the grilled chicken sandwich combo and - Oh! Large coffee. Black.)    
  
“But you have Aglionby,” Gansey explained as he rolled the window back up. “You have an arena to fight in. That’s what Kavinsky gives him that we can’t.”    
  
Adam stayed silent, staring at his scuffed loafers as Gansey made pleasantries with the girl at the window grabbing sweating soft drinks and crunchy paper bags, still crisp and without soggy grease stains. Adam took them in hand, settling Gansey’s bag on the console and his on his lap so he’d have a hand free for his coffee.    
  
Adam cradled the paper cup solemnly as Gansey slowly pulled away. The same buildings and people and trees passed them by and Adam seemed irked by the looping landscape, assessing it with a face pinched in frustration. Finally, he turned to Gansey like a compressed spring that finally had the weight lifted off of it.    
  
“That’s not good enough for me.” Adam snapped, cheeks a frustrated pink underneath his freckles. “I don’t care what Kavinsky can give Ronan. He raped him, Gansey.”    
  
There was a moment, where that word just hung in the car, heavy and rotten. There was no music to muffle its echo, and It was more pungent than any of the greasy, fatty food in the car. Gansey desperately wanted to roll down his windows just to feel like he could breathe again, but maybe it’d help him understand something if he didn’t.   
  
“The worst part is Ronan doesn’t think it’s anything. He acted like it was any fucking hangover. If I even see Kavinsky I’d-” Adam didn’t finish. Gansey was glad he didn’t want to have to start counting again. Adam felt differently, clearly, as he grunted and slammed his fists into his thighs so hard his khakis were speckled with hot coffee.    
  
“Hey, hey-” Gansey held out a hand, loose and easy so Adam would know it wasn’t an order or even a request. “There’s a vinegar solvent in the glovebox, before the stains set.” 

Adam didn’t move, however. He had his hand gripped so tight around his coffee it was raising Gansey’s blood pressure, and all he could do was focus on the traffic light, and merging into the other lane. 

“I hate him. I really do.” Adam snarled. The Pig whined as the pulled to a stoplight. There wasn’t a soul around, just fall winds playing with leaves in loop-de-loops across the skyline. Adam finally put his coffee in the cupholder and pulled out the small metallic spray bottle wrapped up in a shop rag. The strained groan of the seldom used stainless steel sang the frustrations that Gansey wouldn’t, and he didn’t quite like to be upstaged by cleaning supplies.    
  
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word for your father.” Gansey commented. He spoke like a weatherman nonchalant about an incoming hurricane, and he knew it’d probably piss Adam off but he truly had no other tools for this.   
  
“ ‘Cause my friends aren’t hanging out with my father, and unlike my dad, Ronan  _ likes  _ me so I thought maybe I could actually help this time!” Adam yelled and winced after he had a moment to catch a breath. Gansey wondered why he seemed to collect people who had to fight their anger from consuming them, he wondered if Adam knew that Ronan and him were similar in that way- even if they handled it with two starkly different play books. 

“Eat, Adam. You need the calories to focus in class.” It was a flimsy bargaining chip, but Adam begrudgingly accepted it and crammed some fries into his mouth. Gansey made sure not to make a face as he chased them with coffee. “I thought you said Ronan needed to clean up his own messes.”    
  
“He does.” Adam insisted. “But he can’t do that with Kavinsky making even more of them.”    
  
He nodded. Adam wasn’t wrong, but there was so much swirling in Adam’s undertow, and he was trying to distract Gansey with wavy surface level anger. 

“So what’s the difference between me wanting to help him, and you?”    
  
“It...It just is.” Adam took a wolfish bite of his sandwich, bared teeth as he avoided the question. Gansey wasn’t sure if he was flustered, or just keeping something he thought he wouldn’t want to hear. Which was just as well, Gansey didn’t want to play debate team. It was a long and tedious process that neither had the time nor energy for. But Adam was a stubborn boy, and he needed something to force his hand.   
  
“How did you know Ronan liked you?”    
  
Adam choked on a french fry.    
  
“Did he say that?” Adam’s eyes were blown wide, shining like well polished china saucers. As much as his eyes gave away the rest of his face remained stony. His tight lips spoke volumes in defensiveness, like his mouth was incapable of all the schoolboy wonder that had just poured out of it.

“No,” Gansey found it incredibly hard not to be smug as he pulled back into his spot in the back corner of the parking lot. “You said it.”    
  
Adam flushed like an out of season peach, hands squeezed on top of his thighs and eyes downcast and brows knit in frustration.    
  
“Why Kavinsky?” Adam sighed like the eye of the storm. His words were circular, lazy winds almost elegant bookended by terror.   
  
“I’m not the one to ask that.” Gansey cut the engine, and it was quiet, truly quiet without the white noise of pretense, for the first time they spoke to each other. He thought it funny, how he started this conversation worried about Ronan and now was caught up in consoling, or advising, or whatever this was with Adam.    
  
Gansey grabbed his own food, content it was still at an edible temperature. They enjoyed the silence, let their batteries recharge with their over salted excuse for lunch. Usually, this was where Gansey would talk about Glendower or classes, or where Adam was looking at colleges- even Ronan in a less severe way. There was no space left in the Camaro to talk about the every day, he could almost hear Adam calling them trivial. Gansey’s thoughts were shattered like prop glass along with the quiet in his car as Adam crumpled up his bag, balling it as compact as he could muster.    
  
“Are you going to yell at him?” Adam said, uncomfortably composed.    
  
“Under no circumstance was that off the table. I had to feed his awful bird, that’s worth a lecture on its own.” Gansey smiled, small and wry and not ingenuine. Adam’s grim frown was becoming so at home on him it seemed as vital a piece of his uniform as his too large sweater.    
  
“I’m gonna try and talk to him tonight. So try not to piss him off too bad?”    
  
“I’ll try, but I can’t promise you anything.” That, Gansey just  _ said _ . He said it like boys who didn’t need to think before they spoke said things. That earned him the closest thing Adam could muster to smile, a sad excuse for one, skeletal and gloomy.    
  
“Thanks, Gansey.” Adam just said that, too. He opened the door to the Camaro with one hand, coffee carefully balanced in the other. The sun beat down hot, he could feel the molten pavement through the leather of his loafers. Gansey was tempted to roll up his sleeves, even with the bite the chilly winds. He squinted at Aglionby, sunlight near blinding.

“No problem. Good luck.”    
  
Adam raised his free hand to his eyes as a makeshift visor to look at Gansey with his almost smile. It looked particularly strained, but Gansey told himself it was just the beating sunlight.    
  
“We know that isn’t my lot. I’ll make the best of the worst, though.”   
  
Gansey nodded, bouncy enough that he had to comb a hair back behind his ear that slipped free. They moseyed to the closest trash can to toss their crumpled food bags, and Adam gulped the lukewarm remains of his fast food coffee with a grimace. Gansey clapped a sympathetic hand on his shoulder as he threw the cup away.    
  
In the shade of a tree desperately holding on to yellowing leaves, Gansey drunk in Aglionby. The windows glittering in the sunlight made it look more like a whimsical crystal castle than a boarding school. It made his mouth twitch, and his stomach churn with uncertainty.    
  
_ I can’t do this anymore, Gansey _ .

He could see Ronan’s grit teeth and jittering eyes behind by an armored curtain of his lashes. 

“You’re gonna be late for world history!” Adam yelled from the middle of the lot. His hair flaxen, bleached by the sun. It was bright enough Gansey could see the constellations of freckles clearly across his tan skin. Adam was almost beautiful in the sunlight like he could thrive here even if the sunny boy standing in front of him was a photo negative of his soul. 

Gansey left his thoughts of Ronan as best he could with the roots of the tree he stood under, and jogged to catch up with Adam, shielding his eyes at the light bouncing off the sea of rearview mirrors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Ash and Tori for helping me work this out! And thanks again to Tori, along with Leggy and Foxy for Betaing for me! It means the world.


	3. I'm gonna tell you something you don't want to hear

Adam didn’t have a phone, but there was one in St. Agnes. It was an old thing with the numbers worn off all the buttons and so yellowed with age that he couldn’t begin to figure out what decade it was from. He supposed it didn’t really matter, so long as it still made calls.  
  
He had a folded piece of notebook paper wedged between the cradle and the wall that had any number he needed scrawled on it. There were only three, Gansey, Ronan, and his parents' home phone in the doublewide. He only ever expected to use two of the three.  
  
He kept the paper between his fingers and punched in Ronan’s number. The dial tone trilled, each repetition winding his heart into a tighter and tighter knot. He had every last muscle tensed before he heard the click to the factory preset answer message, dry and monotone. He let his shoulders relax, and tapped the receiver and dialed Gansey from memory.

“Adam? Is everything okay?” It sounded more precautious than frantic or worried. He could almost hear Gansey doing the mental math of weighing this call against a conversation months prior when he gave Gansey his new number and warned him that it was _ ‘for emergencies only - I don’t pay the phone bill here _ .’  
  
“Yeah, Everything is fine. I just couldn't get through to Ronan." He said it as easy as Gansey had said _ 'I'm sure phone service is included in your rent’ _ back then.

Or at least he hoped he did, because it was much harder for Adam to make this call than it was for Gansey to be flippant about spending. Most things in Adam’s life were. Nonetheless, he kept his tone light and easy- for Gansey or himself or Ronan who couldn’t even hear him. 

“Is he in?” Which was neither light nor easy. It sounded more like he was calling to ask a doctor for an opinion on a growth rather than talk to his friend.  
  
“Uh, I believe so. I heard something in his room - “ There was a pause just long enough to hear Gansey rap his knuckles on Ronan’s door. “Ronan, Telephone.”  
  
Adam thought he might have heard a muffled ‘ _ Eat shit _ .’ Perhaps it was just wishful thinking that Ronan was home.  
  
“It’s Adam.”  
  
And there was silence. Even Adam held his breath, kept himself statue still aside from his bare toes wiggling along the groove between floorboards. He was just about going blue in the face as he heard a deadened clatter and too loud shuffling on in the receiver.  
  
“Parrish?” Ronan’s voice came through more real and clear than it had been that morning. This Ronan sounded undernourished and underslept but no more than his default state. A smile of relief bloomed across his face, despite himself. 

“Hey. You busy?” Adam had sunshine in his voice, soft along all the edges. He could hear a puff of air against the receiver and wondered if Ronan was chewing at the ends of his wristbands. He tended to when he was pretending not to be anxious. 

“Not particularly.” Only Ronan Lynch could whittle L’s down to such sharpness. “Why?” 

Adam pulled at the collar of his coveralls to undo one of the snaps. He had half rehearsed a bunch of things he could say to Ronan but still felt under armed. Adam didn’t have anything that sounded like it could compete with Ronan’s normal Friday routine of drinking too much and getting in trouble with Kavinsky. He didn’t have a shiny car, expensive beers or any of the things Kavinsky lured Ronan out with.

He thought of saying_ Something sounded off on the BMW last night, I really should take a look at it. _ Or _ I just got off work and was planning on doing some shopping. _ And a myriad of other things that weren’t quite false but close enough to lies that Ronan would hang up on him by throwing Gansey’s phone across the room. Adam had to remember two truths he knew about Ronan Lynch in this moment.  
  
He hated lies, and he liked _ him. _ Maybe that was enough.  
  
“I just wanna see you,” Adam accidentally tugged off another snap, and bit his bottom lip hearing his syrupy tone. He didn’t stop talking, though. “I don’t really feel like sleepin’.”

Ronan hummed, low and odd shaped - he was definitely gnawing on his bracelets. 

“Don’t you have advanced historic calc homework to do?”  
  
Adam didn’t take the bait and kept his mouth tight lipped so he couldn’t even betray himself with a sigh.   
  
“It can wait until Sunday.” He said. _ When Ronan was busy _. There was another pause, silent like a poker hand. Adam didn’t flinch, even though no one was watching.

  
“Sure. Where?” Ronan sounded entirely nonplussed, and Adam had to tamp down his giddiness lest he scared him away.  
  
“Can you come over here? Bring a coat, I want to go walking.” Ronan snorted, as close as he was going to get to an affirmative response, and hung up. 

Adam peeled off his coveralls and tossed them to where his hamper was in the corner. The cold air on his bare skin made him shivered, and he picked up his pace to dig his favorite sweater from the milk crate that was his makeshift dresser. It was always easy to find color blocked in proud shades of red. He grabbed it in a fistful and tugged it over his messy hair. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t bother to count the holes in it. 

* * *

“Where are you taking me?” Ronan hissed, fists shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket. Adam sniffed, his own hands tucked deep in his jeans pockets, wishing he took his own advice. He had a long sleeve shirt under his sweater, but every breeze had teeth and he really could’ve used another layer. He didn’t want to break out the winter coat quite yet, though. If he got used to using it now it would do him no good for the frigid winter; he’d rather be uncomfortable now. 

“It’s not a secret, and you wanted to come. Don’t make it sound like I’m kidnapping you.” Adam grinned at Ronan. He was nothing but cut edges under the moonlight, dashed through with shadowy tree branches.  
  
“That’s not what I’m telling my lawyer. Bound and gagged against my will. Dragged, kicking and screaming.” Ronan said it all dead pan, but it was the good kind. When Adam first met Ronan he couldn’t sift between weaponized sarcasm and the playful jabs. They didn’t get along so great, not at first.  
  
“If you’re bound and gagged, how can you be kicking and screaming? You have a lousy case, Lynch.” Adam’s sarcasm was never so hard to define, at least with Ronan. Even in the dark, he could hear his smile wrapped his words like curling ribbon.  
  
“Eh. Maybe being in jail won’t be so bad. It’d give Declan an aneurysm. That’s worth the price of admission right there.”  
  
“Please don’t commit libel just to piss off your brother. Can’t you just get another tattoo? Pierce something?”  
  
“Been there done that. You gotta keep these things fresh, Parrish. I pride myself in finding brand new ways to disappoint Declan every day. It’s a finely crafted art.” In a flash of moonlight, blinking through the tree branches, Adam could see Ronan was actually smiling - just the slightest bit. Adam wanted to live in that moon flash, it warmed him from the stomach out and for a moment he didn’t miss his coat anymore.  
  
Ronan stopped walking the second the hiss of grass turned into the crunch of wood chips. Adam stood by his side glancing up to see Ronan’s expression without looking like he’s staring, hopefully. 

The dim street lights hollowed Ronan’s cheekbones to something so severe, and the bags under his eyes cavernous. His chin and nose were razor sharp, and Ronan looked so very tired of being made for war. Adam didn’t get it, but his heart pulsed with sympathy. 

“I know you like to come here. When you disappear on your own,” Adam said.  
  
Ronan said nothing. He was shadowy and soft along the edges from too little light, Adam could barely make out his thin mouth, and eyes laser focused on the playground in front of him. Only a few of the streetlamps were on, strained and flickering. Underneath the soft strobing the place seemed lonely and forgotten, maybe abandoned. It was no wonder Ronan was attracted to it.  
  
“You make me sound so dramatic,” Ronan scoffed, kicking some wood chips. He skulked over to the swings without so much as looking at Adam. He had to jog a few steps to catch up to him.  
  
“If you don’t think every fiber of your being is dramatic I have some unfortunate news.” Adam grabbed the chain, cold and awful against his hand as he looked over to Ronan, sitting in his swing, sneering at his feet planted firmly on the ground.  
  
“Fuck off.”  
  
“Oh come on, Ronan, don’t take that the wrong way. It wasn’t a bad thing. Gansey’s dramatic and we keep him around.” Adam lowered himself to his own swing  
  
“Don’t compare me to him!” Ronan’s knuckles were white against the chain, and he wouldn’t look Adam in the eyes. He was hunched over himself, and all of his edges filed down to something rounder and smaller than Ronan was. It made Adam more frightened than his weaponized eyes and venom coated words ever did. It made it a lot harder to get angry at him for his typical immaturity.  
  
“I’m sorry.” He said it out the gate because he meant it. “I didn’t mean it like that”  
  
“I fucking know that.” Ronan scrubbed a hand over his face and pushed himself forward on the swing. “You know how that Aglionby crap gets under my skin. If you were a round peg shoved into a square hole every day you’d probably wanna do something dramatic.”

Adam watched Ronan stretch his legs out to the stars and pushed off to chase him.

“There’s a dirty joke in there,” Adam’s voice was a touch strained, as he tried to find momentum. “But I don’t want to give you the satisfaction.” He thinks he sees a smirk on Ronan’s face, but it’s hard to focus on anything other than Gansey echoing down his left side brain.  
  
_ But you have Aglionby _

“Why d’ya like this park so much anyway?” Adam had to shake his head against the wind to keep his bangs out of his eyes.

“Swings,” Ronan said, simple as that.  
  
“That’s it?” Adam let the incredulity seep into his voice. Ronan pried his eyes from the stars to watch Adam.  
  
“I liked them as a kid. Dad hooked up some tree swing in a huge oak in our backyard, and he’d push me until I went all the way around it. Or launch me in a bale of hay. Stupid kid stuff.” A street light that had been dully flickering illuminated to full brightness. Adam could make out Ronan’s wry smirk before it died out again. “I loved it.”  
  
“You like some of the dumbest stuff,” Adam said, smiling. “Betcha I can jump further.”  
  
Ronan’s eyes glimmered like one of the million blinking stars in the sky, or the flickering street lights trying to stay on. They counted to 3 before launching themselves off the swing into a catastrophic pile on the ground. They had no idea who won, but it was hard to care when they laughed so hard they couldn’t breathe.  
  
Ronan had to pry his arm out from under Adam when he finally attempted to sit up again.  
  
“Let’s get some food, I’ve been puking all day and I could eat a fucking horse. And I know your bony ass barely ate dinner.”  
  
Adam sat up, hand on his stiff and aching spine. He winced, and kept rubbing his back like that was the reason for his pain.  
  
“Nothings gonna be open, it has to past midnight by now. Besides, I really don’t have the money-”  
  
“Fuck off, Parrish. You had to detail my car, I think that’s like...I dunno, at least 3 dinners.” Ronan shoved his shoulder. It was awkward in his prone state. Ronan could always tell when he was faking it.  
  
“Didn’t you get my bill? I swore I had it mailed to you.” Adam tucked his knees in close, folding his arms on top of his knees to rest his head down. Ronan stood up and stretched his arms up as far as they’d go, lifting his shirt up just enough to show a strip of skin right above the waistband of his pants that seemed so much brighter than any star in the sky.  
  
“You’re an asshole.” Ronan said it the same way he said it to Chainsaw. Adam jumped because he hadn’t realized he’d been staring.

“Takes one to know one,” he murmured, and it might not have been the most clever retort - but it was words, in English, so he’d take what he could get.  
  
Ronan extended a hand out to Adam, still folded on himself and resting on the ground. Adam obliged, and let Ronan lift him to eye level. His fingers lingered in Ronan's palm for what was, logically, far too long. But his hands fit in Ronan's so well and there was something in his eyes and smile, something that he had to assume was all Niall Lynch, bottled charisma and country charm that could close sales with nothing else but a firm handshake. Adam did his best not to go jelly legged under those rare, kind eyes.  
  
“You’re alright, Parrish.” Ronan clapped a hand on his shoulder, before following the path they had walked to get here.  
  
“You could be worse yourself, Lynch.” 

* * *

Adam wasn’t sure how Ronan knew about a 24 hour restaurant that wasn’t a melamine nightmare, but he was glad he did. The inside of it greeted them with a bar front, even though it was pushing the time when one could order a beer. Not that it stopped the lonely souls at the glossy oak bar from nursing even oakier glasses of whiskey.

A plump waitress far too perky for the hour lead them into the dining area, where they tucked themselves into a booth in the dimmest corner of the restaurant even though they were the only ones there.

The whole place was warm. Ronan’s Irish blood betrayed him and painted his whole face pink the moment they got out of the crisp fall night air. He shucked his coat, and he seemed the most Ronan now - colors balanced by a glowing blue-green tiffany lamp and a black graphic tee that hugged him like a second skin. There was even the steady beat of a drum machine and pulsing synths crackling through radio, a confusing mixture of homey rustic wood and tinny electronica that was Ronan Lynch to a T. 

The waitress brought Adam a lemonade and Ronan a beer. Ronan smiled and Adam thought that he really loved it here. He grinned back at Ronan and his smile grew more toothy. He leaned over his pint of beer like he was going to tell Adam a secret.  
  
“This song isn’t like top 40s material, you know?” Ronan punctuated the sentence by jamming his finger into a glossy knot on the table. Adam nodded, the music that filled the room seemed far too slow and lazy that the stuff that clawed its way out of Ronan’s headphones. “It’s in some movie right now, so people are just all hooked on it because it reminds them of Ryan Gosling. It’s dumb as hell.”  
  
“You like movies?” Adam asked, sipping his lemonade. He had some awful thought, the kind his brain is usually good at filtering out before it reaches his conscious thought, that while everyone would be thinking of Ryan Gosling, he’d have teal tinted Cheshire grinned Ronan burned into his memory- and he’d take that over handsome Hollywood face any day.   
  
Adam was swiftly running out of lemonade.  
  
“Eh,” Ronan sipped through the foam of his beer. “Not particularly. Matthew likes movies though. We usually go on Sunday after church after Declan fucks off to whatever's too good for us. It’s not so bad, though.”  
  
“Do Declan and Matthew do anything together?” Adam was almost surprised to hear himself talk. It was an odd thing, to talk to Ronan about his family. It was about as far away from Glendower or the other trials of their daily lives - and usually the number one topic to get Ronan into tantrum mode.   
  
“School stuff, mostly.” Ronan said it so nonchalantly Adam almost didn’t discern it from the order of wings, two kinds because he knew Adam didn’t like spicy stuff, and loaded waffle fries for them. “Declan does all the boring lame stuff to make sure ‘At least one of his brothers are on the straight and narrow’,” Ronan’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he pantomimed overdramatic air quotes. “So I get to do all the fun shit he likes.” 

“You need to stop giving away all your secrets. I’m gonna start to think you’re not actually an asshole.” Adam smiled like his veins were filament warming his entire being to light. Ronan hid behind his beer. 

“Fuck off, Parrish.” He elongated every vowel, stretched them to the exhaustion he was feigning. He turned his head down toward the table, directly under the glow of the yellow lamplight without it seafoam filter. There was a watercolor bloom on his right temple, painted in reckless brushstrokes of blue and purple. 

“Jesus,” Adam said out loud reaching out a hand to stop just shy of a nasty purple welt. He wonders how he never noticed it, even in the dark. Adam wanted to ask how it happened, he wanted to ask if Ronan was okay, if the others were this bad hidden under his clothes and a million other unbelievably stupid questions. Despite his best efforts, one of them managed to slip past his tongue. “He really hurt you bad, huh?”  
  
Ronan flared his nostrils and leaned back into the booth, hands shoved his in jeans pockets to look aggressively casual. He wouldn’t look at Adam as he talked, rather staring through knotted kitsch covered walls longingly, as if he had some kind of super sight and could see straight through them all the way to The Barns. 

“I’ve survived worse,” Ronan’s words were reed thin, hollow and wind whipped. Adam wondered what government approved shrink bought that and didn't want to think about what the price tag looked like.  
  
“That’s not the point, Ronan. That’s no good reason to go out getting yourself hurt.” 

Ronan huffed as their food arrived. The waitress brought a pitcher of lemonade, and their silence choked him through the excruciating slowly passing seconds as his glass was refilled. Ronan turned his head away so he didn’t have to look at either of them, and Adam caught a glimpse of little grape marks scattered on his neck, cut by the talons of his tattoo.

“Why do you do it?” Adam’s spoke with a blunt edge, but his words were still brandished to Ronan. Despite that, Ronan was unarmed. He looked at Adam, tired, and tore apart a chicken wing with his teeth. He seemed to be waffling on something - maybe what _ it _ was. Adam knew he knew, though. Maybe he was deciding if he’d ask Adam anyways just to make him say it out loud. 

Ronan, perhaps for the first time in his life, didn’t take the shitty way out. 

“It feels good,” Ronan said, mouth full. Somewhere, through all the clucks of Ronan trying to lick buffalo sauce off his teeth, Adam could hear it all. The racing, the drinking, the kissing. There was a part of them that understood they all powered a different part of Ronan. But Kavinsky overloaded his circuit breaker, and took joy in it. 

Adam grabbed his own wing, avoiding any that were splattered with angry orange.  
  
“Until it doesn’t,” Adam said, before taking a bite of the hickory sweet chicken. God, he always forgot how hungry he was until he had the chance to eat without having to think too hard about it. Ronan tossed the bone onto his plate, staring at the food like it had changed shape on him.  
  
“Until it doesn’t,” he agreed. Ronan plucked a shiny honey glazed wing from Adam’s side of the plate.  
  
“Does it always end up hurting?” 

Ronan doesn’t tear apart his food like it wronged him this time. He chews on the thought before responding. 

“Yeah. I guess it does.” Ronan frowned, his eyebrows knit like Adam’s would at a tricky math problem.  
  
“So why keep doing it?” Adam knew it was a challenge when he said it, and he straightened his spine defensively.  
  
“I don’t wanna do this right now. It’s not fucking black and white.” Ronan snarled and took his simmering anger out on the food. Adam hummed around a fry. He didn’t quite have the words to unpack the level of cognitive dissonance he was wading through.

Because It was black and white, to Adam at least. Ronan- good (citation needed). Kavinsky- bad (unanimous). 

But he had a flash of every pitiful face that Gansey would give Adam when he showed up to school bruised or bandaged and wanted to scream at him that he didn’t _ get _it. 

Adam guessed he didn’t get _ this. _

“I just don’t like the way he treats you,” Adam said, feeling rather mature about himself. He let any anger fizzle into harmless steam, and didn’t use words like _ abuse _ that’d get Ronan to boiling point all over again.

Not that it was an incorrect word to use here. Adam supposed he was the group expert on that sort of thing, so he could say it if he wanted to.

“I know what I’m getting myself into,” Ronan sneered, like that was even something they were talking about. Adam rolled his eyes, and Ronan made a face like a bulldog at him. “I wasn’t really expecting Joseph Motherfucking Kavinsky to treat me to a candlelit dinner.” 

“Do you want that?” Adam said it before he realized he even thought it. He gulped, shamefully hot under the Tiffany lamp that he swore got brighter just to embarrass him. 

“Are you fucking with me, Parrish? Candlelight isn’t me.” Ronan’s face soured, the same way it soured anytime he had to pull on his Aglionby uniform. “I’m a bomb, remember?” Adam didn’t. And he definitely didn’t get that at all. “Explosions, Molotovs. That shit’s more my speed.” 

The condensation from his glass rolled onto Adam’s fingers. He rubbed the moisture into his skin, like it’d gleam him more understanding into the inner workings of Ronan’s mind. 

It didn’t.

“That’s not what I asked,” Adam twisted his fingers together flat on the table. “Do you want that, Ronan?”  
  
“Don’t be stupid.” It sounded almost like a pout. It wasn’t an answer. Adam rubbed his thumb against the knuckle of his pointer finger, analyzing the bags under Ronan’s eyes and decided to let him off the hook.  
  
“So was the Ryan Gosling movie any good, or?” he asked, stirring the ice in his lemonade so it clinked around like dull wind chimes.  
  
“It was quiet,” Ronan shrugged. That also wasn’t an answer. “He could get it, though.”  
  
“Gross,” Adam said, but he felt a smile unfurling, pushing his cheeks up to his eyes. There’s a lofty look in Ronan’s eyes - something that came from having asinine conversations that highschoolers are supposed to. Something less jagged edged than life or death and less tender than all of his bruising. They weren’t used to that sort of thing, so they shouldn’t have been too shell shocked when it came crashing down with a titanic palm to their table.

“First I have to track you down, and then you’re talking about other guys,” 

Adam’s spine went rigid at the tone that spilled out of the man’s mouth like poison. 

Fucking Kavinsky. 

Adam didn’t panic. He couldn’t. He kept a casual glower painted on his face, and eyed Kavinsky like a numbered lab rat. He feigned nonchalance, as if Kavinsky’s sneer was so tiresome he simply had to give his attention to Ronan instead. He had his hands folded so tight to not give up his ruse. 

Not that he couldn’t feel Ronan radiating DANGER. But to see his shoulders squared up, body puffed up like a defensive animal - it made something in Adam’s stomach drop. Kavinsky leaned into his palm pressed flat against their table, so far into Ronan’s space their noses almost touched. He flipped up his Wayfarers, and Adam was almost glad to stare at his wild, beady eyes if not just to escape reflections of Ronan’s tormented face in his lenses.  
  
“You’re breakin’ my heart, Lynch.” Kavinsky always said Ronan’s name like he could taste it, like some party drug constantly balanced on his tongue, and he could eat him alive at any minute. “Didn’t you remember? It’s date night. I don’t like being stood up.”

“Maybe I’m cheating on you,” Ronan said, every word flat and but too pointed around the edges to sound genuinely bored. 

“Oh, no,” Kavinsky laughed, acidic. “You better not tell Dick that, he seems like a romantic. How many mistresses do you need?” Kavinsky’s mouth curled into something wicked. He rolled his tongue, like a red carpet for the slur he was presenting to Ronan. “Slut.” 

“Fuck off.” Ronan pushed him away, just enough to keep him at arm's length.

“You’re too tense, baby. I have all sorts of fun things to work out that attitude problem. You’ll love it.” Kavsinky rested his arm on the table, angling his hips to Ronan. He acted like Adam wasn’t even there. He could feel his worn down fingernails in his palm.  
  
“I don’t fuck with drugs,” Ronan said. Kavinsky looked like he wanted to laugh, eyes blown, smile so wide Adam could see the line of his gums past his porcelain teeth.  
  
“You never turn down a little K.”  
  
Ronan shoved his fist into his pocket and grabbed an arbitrary amount of bills- far beyond to cover what they ordered. He shouldered past Kavinsky hard enough to send him stumbling and didn’t even bother to look back to see it. Kavinsky actually laughed this time.  
  
Adam ignored how his body felt swollen and buzzing with heat and focused all his energy on finding Ronan. Adam burst through the restaurant door, and had to adjust his eyes. The cold and vast parking lot striped with sickly street lights is a far cry from the radiant oaky booth with the sea glass lamp that left Ronan glowing. Adam couldn’t spot him, at first, until his silhouette bled from the shadows into the halo of too yellow lamplight.  
  
Adam jogged to catch up, finally feeling his fingers again in the chilly air, even if his head was still nothing but the white noise of frustration. He reached out, mouth parted on words he hadn't quite conjured up yet- it was going to be something clumsy, and either too sweet or too acidic. He wasn’t sure, but he knew nothing was balanced right now.  
  
He didn’t even have the chance, though. As Kavinsky grabbed Ronan by the arm, Adam saw nothing but the flash letterman's jacket, red as blood.  
  
“Race me, Lynch.” It was teeth and nails and primal smile. Every word in his pulse throbbed from his entire body. “You wanna. You belong on the streets. You’re so good there, You look so good.”  
  
Adam was as stiff as Ronan. Ronan, who had his jaw clenched so tight that his skin clung to his throat and eyes angled like a switchblade to Kavinsky’s throat. But he didn’t move, just balled his shaking fists and stared at him. He didn’t say _ fuck off _ , _ fuck you _ or _ fuck this _ or any iteration of _ No _ that’s in Ronan’s lexicon. 

_ It feels good. _

“C’mon Lynch. I know how to make you forget.” Kavinsky’s hand spidered up Ronan’s arm, resting claw like on the back of his neck. Ronan’s eyes looked worlds away, body sans soul. “Maybe this time you can call out my name this time though, you’re gonna hurt my feelings someday.”  
  
_ Until it doesn’t. _

Every emotion Adam had exploded together in a white hot supernova so fast he couldn’t understand any part of any one of them. He didn’t even realize he hit Kavinsky until he felt the searing heat burst over his knuckles, and then he finally felt the heavy breaths wracking his entire body. He darted his eyes over to Ronan, like a jumpy rabbit being chased by a fox rather than the attacker - and Ronan was poised to fight. He had kinetic energy compressed into all his limbs like a spring - but he didn’t move.  
  
Kavinsky looked ghoulish, body slack against the lamplight, an incredulous hand cradling his jaw. Then that goddamn shark smile crept across his face.  
  
“Your girlfriends are so territorial of their wandering whore. I didn’t think you were _ that _ good of a lay-”  
  
Another mental flashbang exploded, blinding all his senses for god knows how long, until he could feel Kavinsky ribs dense underneath the worn rubber sole of his shoe. He froze, staring at Kazinsky’s crumpled form shaking with laughter. He felt warm, suddenly, before he realized Ronan’s arms were around him, dragging him off of Kavsinsky.  
  
He was out of control.  
  
Adam struggled out of Ronan’s arm, screwing his eyes shut to simmer his rage. He wasn’t angry at Ronan, he reminded himself. The moment he was free - he turned on his feet, stiff and awkward as he walked away more like he was late for meeting than committing aggravated assault.  
  
Assault. 

All of a sudden it was hard to breathe. He gasped as he walked so fast the streetlights strobed his vision. 

_ Assault. _

He let something so cheap and wicked inside of him control his every neuron. He was so weak for a moment he almost destroyed all his hard work with his bare hands. Every sleepless night, every lunch spent in the library, all his starving, all his working could’ve been for fucking nothing because he couldn’t control his goddamn self. 

Cause it wasn’t like Kavinsky didn’t deserve it. Adam had no sympathy left in any part of his being. Not after seeing this dirtbag try and smear off all of Ronan’s war paint so he could trace the veins to his bleeding heart. 

He felt a hand clapping on to his shoulder, and whipped around to see Ronan’s blown eyes and gasping mouth. For a second, Adam thinks it all might be worth it. 

“What the hell is your problem?” Ronan snapped, and it sounded like the click of a pin being pulled in the back of Adam’s mind.  
  
“My _ problem _ ?” Adam was already screaming, his dreadful accent being echoed back to him in the parking lot. “After everything we talked about and everything that happened, you’re mad at _ me? _ You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”  
  
“I don’t need defending! You think I can’t fucking handle myself? You think I haven’t been fucking handling myself this whole time? I don’t need you - or Gansey, or anybody keeping tabs on me. I’m not a god damn problem child!” Ronan roared at him, jamming a clawed hand into his chest every time he said _ I. _

"Unbelievable,” Adam sighed. He meant to lace his words with an acerbic laugh, but he couldn't even manage a smile out of spite. “You think I was trying to defend you? You think I just didn't hit him because I wanted to?” Adam kept his hands tight, jamming his nails into the palm of his hand again just to make sure he could still feel. He screwed his eyes shut until he saw red blotches in the corners of the darkness and sucked in a sharp breath of cold air

“ ‘Cause I hit him because his voice just pisses me _ off _ . I hit him because I can't fucking stand what you let him do to you.” Adam stopped, took a breath and pushed his bangs back on his head. He could see Ronan, lone in the lamplight like a shadow of himself. Adam doesn’t even care that he’s about to sound pitiful. “I know you don’t need defending, Ronan. You’d stop him if you wanted to. But you just don’t want to.”

Adam sucked in another breath and kept his eyes closed like he knew he’s going to get hit. Even though Ronan wouldn’t hit him. He screams and yells and tears and destroys - but no one is ever victim to his rampage. But Adam’s braced for his flurry of words that might as well be punches.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
Adam had to blink because he was sure he didn’t hear that right. He opened his eyes and he saw Ronan, shoulders sloped down and head hung like he was strung up for execution. He’s stood right next to Adam now, and all he could do was gape at him, like their argument had been doused with cold water, and all that was left was their steaming skeletons and shivering raw hearts.  
  
“Ronan-”  
  
“No. Stop.” Ronan put a frustrated hand between them, shaking with something Adam knew too well. “Let me take you home. Or Monmouth. You can take my bed, it’s fine. You need to get some sleep.”  
  
They had agreed to help Gansey bright and early tomorrow. Ronan was going to come get him one way or the other. It’d save him the trip. It was efficiency.  
  
More honestly- Adam didn’t really want to be alone with his anger. He didn't want Ronan to be alone with his hatred.

“Okay,” Adam agreed, and Ronan made the face Adam must’ve when he said he was sorry. “Let’s go to Monmouth.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to Cat for being an a+ beta and reigning in my tenses. One day I'll get it.


	4. I'm gonna show you where it's dark, but have no fear

Ronan didn’t say a word on the way back to Monmouth, but neither did Adam. Ronan didn’t bother to turn on the stereo. The electronica that normally muffled his thoughts felt like it would crush them to indecipherable dust underneath its raging bass beat. So he kept the windows down, and let the rush of air and thrum of the engine be white noise to calm down his thoughts without destroying him.  
  
Not that it worked, though.

Especially when what he was thinking about the most was barely a foot away from him, lounging in his passenger seat. Adam leaned his head in his hand, arm draped across the window sill. Ronan couldn’t see anything but the wind mussing up his dusty hair, cooler and two shades darker underneath night’s shadow. Ronan was okay with that, though. He didn’t think he wanted to see whatever expression was on Adam’s face, or his swelling knuckles. He wasn’t sure he could take it. He’d already apologized to Adam more this week than he had in his entire fucking life, so the emotional tank was running on empty. 

The even more exhausting thing was that Ronan meant it. Like, he wouldn’t _ say it _ if it wasn’t true but, like - 

He wasn’t used to feeling sorry. He wasn’t sure if all of this was ‘_ sorry’ _ churning in his stomach like a shaken up snow globe. He wasn’t sure what to name the flurry inside him. All he knew was that when Adam punched Kavinsky in the jaw it probably looked a lot like when he decked Robert Parrish in his crooked, yellow teeth. It unearthed conversations with Gansey about what they should do about the _ ‘Adam Situation’ _ , and Ronan told him _ Parrish could stop it if he wanted to. He clearly doesn’t want to. _ Ronan remembered not being able to go to the hospital and the look on Gansey’s face when he had to pick him up from the police station. He remembered the sleepless nights with his stomach tangled in a guilty knot over the fact that Adam reorganized his pride, his budget, and whatever little he had that he could truly call his completely around for _ Ronan’s _well being. 

And Adam was never once angry with Ronan. Not like this, at least. Perhaps. It was a more quiet, simmering thing. A hum Ronan could only catch in the quiet moments he didn’t often allow himself. Maybe it was closer to resentment. Ronan wasn’t sure if he was feeling resentment, or anger, or if those were just ingredients to something more complex he’d never understand. But his brain felt like it was floating in his lead heavy skull and he didn’t want to punch anyone or knock anything over. 

And if he didn’t want to do that, then he had no concept of where to even start to deal with everything gnawing at his bones. So he stared at the road, eyes jumping from each puddle of light until it guided him to the sun-stained brick fortress he called home, macabre under the veil of night.  
  
He sighed through his nose as he turned the engine off, barely audible even in the uncanny silence. He ripped off the bandaid to look over at Adam, folded in on himself, head buried in the crook of his elbow.

“Parrish?” he asked softly, like he was cooing to Chainsaw. Nothing. Ronan stepped out of the car with a _ normal _level of action. No stomping, no slamming - downright serene by Ronan standards. He paced over to Adam’s side. He was still propped up, leaning against the window. There was no right way to do this. 

Best case scenario - Ronan scoops him up, they get upstairs without Adam waking up and making it fucking _ weird _ and Gansey asleep without having to find them being fucking _ weird _. The odds of all those things happening were slim to nil. 

A close second - Ronan opens the door, Adam topples out and falls flat on his ass and Ronan laughs at him. He grumbles, calls Ronan an asshole but then things aren’t weird. 

Worst case scenario - basically anything other than those two.

Maybe he should just leave him in the car.

Ronan let out all the frustration bloating his body with a heavy sigh, before putting his fingers on the handle, and propping up his body so he’d be at the best level to catch Adam. Maybe.

He slowly peeled the door open and suppressed a grunt as 5’9” of compact boy tumbled out of the BMW and right into his chest. Ronan was lucky Adam was skin and fucking bones, and Niall Lynch trained his sons to be strong - whatever that meant for each of them.

He held Adam close to his chest as if he was trying to muffle him from some night horror that wasn’t there. Ronan stayed like that - longer than he needed to. He told himself he wanted to make sure Adam was still asleep, so that he didn’t have to carry him up.  
  
Like he didn’t want to.  
  
He shifted Adam to hike as much over his shoulder as he could without waking him, one arm wrapped around his shoulder, and the other firm under his rear. Ronan was instantly reminded of trying to carry sheep barely larger than himself around. Matthew found it incredible, and his father thought it was hilarious - which annoyed Declan. So it became one of Ronan’s favorite things to do, even when the sheep would chomp on his ear in protest.  
  
Adam was warmer than any sheep and smelled so much better. He had a hint of that sweaty, oily scent he always had after a night of working at the garage. Adam always grimaced whenever he became too aware of it, or Ronan teased him for it.  
  
Like it wasn’t the sexiest thing ever. Ronan would bottle it into cologne if he could science out the logistics to such a thing. 

He had to remind himself he didn’t have the time or emotional capacity to be horny right now. Even if an angry jerk off session sounded leagues better than stewing in self loathing all night while reading the barrage of Kavinsky’s texts waiting on his phone over and over again like a bad diagnosis. 

He hoisted himself, with Adam, up and began walking to Monmouth in quiet strides he ripped out of his body with forced fragility. It took Ronan three times as long as it should’ve to get up the rusty wrought iron stairs. He kept his hand splayed over as much of Adam’s back as he could, pressing him closer than they’ve ever been. Ronan’s entire god damn world was sleepy sighs, and tawny whisps of hair tickling the back of his neck and his stupid sexy smell. It made Ronan very aware he wasn’t kissing anyone tonight, and then he felt bad in a completely new way. 

He tried to shove any thought of kissing out of his mind - Adam, Kavinsky or fucking otherwise - and fished for the key in his pocket, leaning back as far as he could to keep Adam level on his body.  
  
The door opened with a groan, and Ronan winced. Monmouth always looked more massive at night, with starlight and streetlight giving an ambiance that made the space seem vaster. Everything was cool blues aside for the stark white of Gansey’s mattress in the center, Gansey himself with his back turned to them. He looked ethereal, almost glowing. Nature was giving him a spotlight, to highlight how special he truly was.  
  
Ronan had no time for it. He wrinkled his nose as he shouldered into his room, and closed the door with his heel. 

Chainsaw, being the very smart girl she was, stretched away and flapped her wings but kept her stupid beak shut. Ronan would be sure to get her a bag of the _ good _ croutons she liked. In the meantime, he rested Adam with the gentlest hand into his bed. He held his breath tight in his chest as, inch by inch, he scooted his arms out from under his body. 

He didn’t realize how cold it would leave him. He refused to let himself dwell on it. He walked over to Chainsaw’s cage, scratching under her chin. She puffed up in pride, and Ronan grinned. He grasped to his desk for any spare crumb he might have, only coming up with two and a half spare corn chips she seemed more than happy to crunch.   
  
“Good girl,” Ronan whispered, as hushed as he could. “There’s more in it for you if you look over him, okay? If you see a shitty white Lancer outside scream as loud as you can. I’ll get you whatever chip you want.”

“Ronan?” A drowsy drawl swallowed all the vowels in his name. He must've been too busy fawning over his goddamn bird to notice Adam shifting in his bed. He shoved his hands in his pockets, squared up his shoulders, and didn’t think about anything that happened tonight as he turned to him.  
  
“Go to sleep, asshole. You barely get enough of it as is.” Ronan heard his voice, but he didn’t feel his mouth moving.  
  
“ ‘m,” Adam yawned, and it made him look two years younger and nothing like someone who’d fight a man. “Bed? Yours?”  
  
“Yes, bed mine.” Ronan rolled his eyes. “Sleep in it, I’m not gonna.”  
  
A sleepy Adam, while as stupid as waking Adam was smart, was at least subservient. It took him a split second to close his eyes and wrap his arms around Ronan’s pillow, burying his face deep in it.

  
Ronan walked out the door, didn’t slam it, and didn’t think about how he wished he could give that to Adam every day.  
  
It was so easy not to think about it, once he left Adam in a separate world behind drywall and pine. He’d left one very lovely thought alone with Adam and guarded by Chainsaw, and faced the million ugly thoughts he’d been trying to ignore this entire time. He stared at the shifting shadows on the wall painted by moonlight and his wretched imagination, too many of them crowded too close together to pick out a specific silhouette. 

It wasn’t just Kavinsky - and Ronan supposed, it never was. It was his father’s corpse. It was Declan’s Armani jackets, it was Matthew’s grim mortality, it was never telling Gansey that he was gay, it was never telling anyone he was so miserable he could hardly bear it, it was telling a government psychiatrist he wasn’t trying to kill himself, it was the first guy he ever met who was interested him being more interested in hurting him and it was not kissing Adam Parrish or holding Adam Parrish or even touching Adam Parrish.

It was a lot. Ronan was a damaged ship one sprung leak away from capsizing. He couldn’t go under. He wanted nothing more than to keep his lungs full of air rather than pain.  
  
So he turned his back on it again and escaped to the laundry/kitchen/bathroom for some air, or something. Maybe another beer. He didn’t really want it, but Ronan wanted some amount of creature comfort and it was what he knew best.  
  
He stared at the mismatched cans in the fridge, all loose remains of leftover packs that Ronan couldn’t get to in a single night. He saw a flash of orange, brilliantly metallic even just under fridge light. There was a photo negative of the laughing heron, burned into the back of his mind with Kavinsky’s fucking cackle echoing in stereo and he had to slam the fridge shut.  
  
He couldn’t fucking breathe. He could feel his shoulders heaving, see his hands shaking, but he didn’t feel like he could get any oxygen to his god damn brain. He had to get away. He wasn't, he didn’t- it didn’t matter. He’d do laps around Monmouth. Walk to the grimey 24 hour 7/11 and get a coke Slurpee that was always mixed too icey. He just couldn’t stay here, do this, in this personal hell of mocking birds and phantom kisses down his neck that made him want to rip off his own skin.  
  
He whipped his whole body around, with enough momentum looking back wasn’t an option and hurdled himself forward - right into Gansey.  
  
“Jesus,” he coughed, bringing his hand to readjust the wireframes Ronan had knocked askew. “Jesus, Ronan.” 

This was something Ronan had heard a million times from Gansey. From _ Jesus Ronan, please use utensils we are in public _ to _ Jesus Ronan I can’t keep bailing you out, literally. _

This had neither the venom, nor the ire of any of them. He had to blink a few times to clear his vision, which he realized had gone blurry and soft around the edges. This Gansey looked downright pitiful. This was funeral suit Gansey, who waited by the Camaro like a getaway car after Niall Lynch’s body was buried. This was a Gansey who reluctantly took clippers to Ronan’s dark curls, or rubbed Aquaphor down the raw inky lines on his back. It was the shadow to the groomed and coiffed Gansey, with a politician’s voice and Megawatt smile. When Ronan first met that Gansey, he thought he was the most annoying boy in the world. Now, he missed him so much his heart ached hard enough to feel it in his bones. 

“Ronan,” Gansey whispered, and he held a hand curiously curled at a safe distance. “Are you alright?” 

Ronan wanted to smash those crystal-delicate words underneath his fist - but his hands were still shaking.  
  
“Fuck,” he hissed, and he could feel his vision blurring again. “Fuck.” He screwed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth again before he could bear to look at this crumpled, young looking Gansey that made him remember far too much.  
  
Gansey reached his hand up to Ronan’s face, smudging wetness away.  
  
“Shh, Ronan,” Gasney hummed. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you, we’ve got you.”  
  
Ronan wiped his snotty nose onto Gansey’s t-shirt in a pathetic act of rebellion, but it was all he could muster and it was something. A warm arm was behind his shoulder, leading him back out to the main room and pulling him down on top of Gansey’s mattress.

Ronan sniffled, but he felt too exhausted to emote any further. And he wasn’t sure how to even respond, his face cradled in Gansey’s hands like he was a precious artifact - and how kingly Gansey looked under scattered starlight. Ethereal glowing freckles, and intense kind eyes that were just for him. 

  
“You’re not alone, Ronan. You never have been.” The words came out breathy and clumsy, none of the teleprompter finish that made conversations sound more like speeches for anyone listening in. It made Gansey seem as raw as Ronan felt, and it made it a little easier to believe him.  
  
“You don’t have to carry all this by yourself. You’re family to so many people, we want to be there for you.”  
  
Ronan turned his face into the pillow, wishing it was Gansey’s shoulder but couldn’t bring himself to. Even when Gansey pried his face out, he screwed his eyes shut because he couldn’t deal with this - handle the truth that he wasn’t handling shit on his own. Maybe he never was. He thought for a flash of a second before scrubbing it away with a clenched fist over his eye.

“There are so many people who look out for you, Ronan. Declan-” Ronan found the fortitude to peel his eyes open to make sure Gansey got every angle of his glare. Gansey was already tired of the notion of Ronan’s damage with his brother before he could get a word out. “No, no, none of that. I started low on purpose. Shush. Let me finish. You have _ Matthew. _” Gansey’s tone dared Ronan to argue with that one. He couldn’t, and wouldn’t. “You have me, Blue and Noah.” Gansey’s words were kneaded with the air of his tone, letting them grow larger and softer as he spoke. He paused and let his mouth gape for a moment before he filled his lungs with air, like he needed it to fuel his next words. 

“You have Adam.” Each syllable clear as cut crystal glass. Gansey said Adam’s name with the kind of importance he usually saved for Welsh kings.  
  
It made Ronan’s eyes well up again, even though he really tried to look this Gansey in the eye before he blended into watercolor shapes. There was a thumb on his cheekbone, reaching to wipe them away in no time. Even with his vision clear, Ronan couldn’t tell if the glint in Gansey’s eye was wistfulness or worry. He had a lopsided smile that didn’t quite fit on his face. It made him look somehow sad. 

“He really cares about you,” he whispered, softer than anything he’d said so far, like it was the only thing that was a secret. “It might be what you need.”

Ronan opened his mouth, gaping like he knew the words he wanted in a language he wasn’t native in. Gansey drew his hands away from his face, and Ronan realized how _ hot _ he was. He felt like it was radiating heat like coals, and his eyes stung at every contact of air. 

“Gansey-” It was the only thing Ronan had, reaching out to grab his arm. He didn’t know why, he didn’t know anything except that his world was growing shadowy around the edges and it frightened him.  
  
“I’m not going anywhere. It’s going to be okay. You can’t get hurt here.”  
  
Gansey rattled on a multitude of other low words, tone chafed raw in a way that no one could find soothing, but might as well have been a lullaby to Ronan. It sounded like sleeping out in the fields and catching fireflies after everyone went to bed and they were _ far _ too old for it. It was burning lumpy couches, funeral suits, and everything Ronan had no room for outside of _ their _ Monmouth. It was Ronan, for not having faith in many - but always trusting Gansey, even saying things that weren’t right under Ronan’s universal truths. He trusted Gansey with his life, and maybe Ronan could learn how much that truly meant.  
  
So Ronan closed his eyes, and told himself not to dream with his last bit of consciousness. He saw a bleary snapshot of Gansey’s smile, and fell asleep.

* * *

Adam had trained himself to rise with the sun, no matter when he laid to rest and even if every fiber of his being ached for sleep. He never had an issue prying himself off a thin twin size mattress in the double-wide. Mornings were the happiest time for him. His parents were out cold for one reason or another. So long as he was careful, he could exist without having to walk on eggshells. 

It was harder at St. Agnes. He was heavier with exhaustion every day, with little to look forward to. Most days, prying himself out of bed was an effort in resilience and a reminder to himself all he’d lose for even a momentary lapse of strength.  
  
Waking up in Ronan’s bed was difficult in a brand new way. Ronan’s sheets were soft, the only kind of soft you got through hundreds of washes, and they had just a hint of the cologne he used. Adam didn’t know about that sort of thing - but it was peppery and woodsy, and he certainly didn’t dislike it. Even though every facet of Ronan was a flashing warning sign, like a brightly colored snake warning you he’s poisonous, Adam felt almost peaceful here. He wasn’t sure he truly knew what peaceful was, or if he had the capacity to let himself be, but the worn down comforter hugged his body in a way that made him want to try and catch up on all his lost hours of sleep at once.  
  
As if that was an option. He ripped the blanket off like a bandaid, and winced at the lack of heat or the staleness of his clothes, both seemed equally as awful. Chainsaw stretched out her wings with a flutter, and Adam went over to try and find a piece of jerky or something on Ronan’s desk as an offering. The desk was a whirlwind of ignored letters, loose change, and crumpled receipts, so Adam fisted his hands into his own pockets to grab a half eaten bag of peanuts he had saved from work. He spilled the remains at the side of her cage, and watched her peck at one curiously. Hopefully that would tide her over until Ronan woke up. If Ronan even slept.

Adam padded on the balls of his feet to the door, the closest thing to silence this place had ever heard, and twisted the doorknob slowly as he peered through the crack. He didn’t see Ronan, pacing or slumped over with headphones or whatever he did to keep himself occupied while he didn’t sleep. The room was more like a still life, until he made out Gansey’s soft snores like white noise. He took a tentative step out, scanning the room just in case he’d be waking anybody. He followed the sleepy grumbles to Gansey’s rising form, all lanky arms and bed-head. Adam waved a good morning and Gansey leaned and squinted at him like an owlish old man. As if there was any question who else would be in his apartment.  
  
Adam sighed a laugh, trying to shoo away the image of Mr. Magoo as Gansey pawed for his glasses on the other side of the mattress. It was hard when Gansey put his whole body into fumbling to get them on his face. He smiled cordially to Adam, scooting off his bed with much more care than normal. Adam cocked his head before everything was explained in the curled form of Ronan Lynch, eyes closed and body shifting with his sleepy breaths. He must have looked like he was about to say something because Gansey preemptively _ ssh’d _ him. Adam didn’t realize he had his mouth agape until he went to bite his lip.  
  
Gansey mouthed the word _ breakfast _ at him, extra slow and stretching his mouth to the absolute capacity of every syllable. There was no way Adam couldn’t understand it. He wondered if Gansey knew he audibly whispered the word. Adam nodded, and Gansey clapped a hand on his shoulder on his way to grab his shoes. Adam snatched his up as well, waiting to get outside before slipping them on.  
  
Once the metal door was locked behind them, Adam looked up from his thumb tucked between his heel and his shoe, to Gansey’s mussed hair.  
  
“You were sleeping with Ronan?” he said, struggling to keep incredulity from flooding his tone.  
  
Gansey ran a hand through his hair like Adam had asked him the weather. “Of course.”  
  
Adam nearly toppled over. He had to wrap his free hand around the wrought iron railing to keep himself steady.  
  
“He seemed worn so thin last night. I wasn’t going to let him stay up.”  
  
Duh. Ronan literally _ fell asleep _ in Gansey’s bed. Adam wanted to feel guilty for his sigh of relief, but he couldn’t find it in him. 

“What happened, I thought you were with him?” Gansey lead them down the stairs, and slid in The Pig without starting it. He pulled off his glasses to grab a comb and some hair wax he kept in the center console. Adam scratched his own hair in sympathy that he couldn’t coif himself in seconds like Gansey could. 

“Kavinsky showed up.” Adam pushed his bangs out of his eyes. “He didn’t...do anything. But it spooked him, I think.”  
  
Gansey didn’t say anything - but he tensed his face, like he tasted something extremely sour and didn’t want anyone to know. His comb stilled in his hair, and took a deep breath before continuing his primping.  
  
“Well, I’m glad you were there,” Gansey said, nodding at himself in the mirror once he was adequately presentable. “You ground him the best, it would’ve been so much worse otherwise.”  
  
“But you can always tell Ronan what to do.” Adam hated that he sounded petulant, more like the child his father beat than the mature face he wore in defense 

He was so caught up in himself that he almost jumped when Gansey pressed his comb into his hands.   
  
“It’s not the same, Adam.” His voice was so lofty it sounded like it would drift out of The Pig’s windows. “Ronan listens to me because he thinks it’s the ‘right’ thing to do. He listens to you because he genuinely cares about your opinion.”  
  
Adam had no idea how to handle that. Ganseys kind words, and his comb. He wanted to be angry about it, but he couldn’t find the words in his throat or what to do with his comb.  
  
But his hair was a bed head mess. So he folded down the passenger vanity mirror, and made eye contact with the little sharpie skull with x’s for eyes. Ronan must’ve tattooed it on there himself. The company of the cartoon made it easier to want to comb his hair. He worked out the knots with less guilt than he ever had from Gansey’s charity and hummed.  
  
“Where are we getting breakfast?”  
  
“You’re dodging the point, Adam.”  
  
Adam tore at his hair too hard, and bit his lip from making a face. “What IS the point, Gansey?” The sediment of sleep weighed down any anger in him, and he never felt happier to simply sound exhausted.  
  
For the first time in his entire life, Richard Gansey the III looked at him like he was stupid.  
  
“Ronan Lynch is more invested- for god’s sake, the fact he IS invested in you is a miracle. No one else is like that for him. I think you can help him the most out of us.”  
  
Adam frowned, tugging at his hair so hard it stung his scalp. The pain gave him something to keep himself level.  
  
“I already have three jobs, Gansey. Babysitting doesn’t pay much.” Adam frowned at himself in the mirror, already disappointed at himself.  
  
“You don’t mean that.” Gansey sounded bored as he slid the key into the ignition, but he didn’t turn it. He rested his hand on the gear shift with casual control, and appraised Adam. Every fiber of his being found it incredibly patronizing. If only he wasn’t right.  
  
“I know. I don’t know what else to do besides what I’m already doing.” Adam ran a hand through his hair and it fell in an awkward wave down the left side of his head. If he knew what to do with it, it’d probably look nice. Like a handsome newscaster, with product sealed volume rather than a kid who needed to cut his bangs. 

“Well,” Gansey held the word on his tongue like he was tasting a bitter wine he knew he should pretend to like. He couldn’t hide pain in his wavering smile from Adam. “If Ronan could reach you instead of Kavinsky, just having a more appealing option could be....extremely beneficial to him.” 

“Gansey.” Adam said his name, not quite a warning shot, but more like the act of loading verbal ammo.  
  
“Adam, give it a serious thought. Having a phone would make _your_ life easier. You could call jobs if you’re running late, you could call Blue, or me, with any Cabeswater things-” _It’s not like your father could smash your hard earned money into angry shrapnel in front of your eyes. _Not that Gansey said it, but he didn’t have to. “I don't think it’s an awful idea.”  
  
“I don’t need it, Gansey.” That one was definitely a warning shot. Gansey stood his ground, fingers rapping on the gear shift in perfect 4/4 time. It sounded like a game show timer counting down and waiting for an answer to a question Adam wasn’t asked.  
  
At least, not out loud.  
  
“You don’t,” Gansey said. Adam knew there was a follow up. It was extremely Un-Gansey to give up so easily. “You don’t need anyone’s charity.” Gansey’s words chilled the car by ten degrees, and Adam shoved his hands full of comb between his thighs.  
  
“Do you consider what you did to Kavinsky charity?” Adam shivered, and all his thighs provided was pressure to dig the comb’s teeth into his dry palms. “Do you consider what Ronan did to your father charity?”  
  
Gansey’s fingers weren’t drumming anymore. Adam was out of time, and he didn’t have an answer. They sat there for what felt like months. He watched autumn wind howling outside, shifting leaves off the road into chaotic piles across the landscape. Adam’s thoughts felt a lot like those leaves, scattered in careless heaps around his brain, around the more structured things- like how to fix the tranny on a Nissan Altima, or everything he needed for his Calc test. These kinds of thoughts were so low to the ground and masked with dust that Adam often tripped over them.  
  
A lot like now. 

He had no idea what to feel about punching Kavinsky. It just happened and it kind of felt like a dream. Like he was living Ronan’s life for a night and he’d wake up to something awful. 

  
A lot like now.

He still didn’t know how he felt about Ronan fighting his dad, and that happened what seemed like ages ago. It was like swallowing a rubix cube. An act of insane discomfort he was carrying with him everywhere with no means to actually solve it. But Ronan never brought it up again. Nor was he the charitable type. Adam didn’t think he was either.

When Adam tried to speak, all that came out was a paltry imitation of the same fall breeze, clearing the leaves off the road. 

  
“Besides,” Gansey offered him a lifeline from drowning in his own god damn head. Adam realized how much Gansey did for him that cost him nothing. It didn’t take time or money to fill the car with words he didn’t have. And he often did the same for Gansey in reverse when he truly needed to shut his mouth. “It’s not really for you.”  
  
He supposed it never was.  
  
“I don’t think I can afford a phone, Gansey.” Adam sank down into the seat, defeated. He caught himself in the rear review. He looked strangely fresh, despite the circumstances. Sleep wasn’t weighing under his eyes quite so much as usual, and while his hair was long it was at least parted in an intentional place. He tried not to look pathetic as he handed the comb back to Gansey.  
  
“What if,” Gansey said the first syllable an octave higher than the last, which meant he was plotting something. It always made Adam’s heart beat in double time with either excitement or anxiety. He couldn’t tell. “We put you on the family plan. You’d only have to pay for like a quarter of the phone upfront and the rest into almost nothing payments. It wouldn’t affect how much we pay for service. Could you swing that?”  
  
“Um. Maybe, I dunno, how much do I need today?” Adam couldn’t help but let his heart flutter with hope, even tied to his leash of pride. It sounded reasonable, though. Then he’d never have to scrounge through his pockets for change for a payphone, never have to wait for anyone on the line at St. Agnes. If Gansey had to reach him, there wouldn’t be any doubt if he could.  
  
He could talk to Ronan whenever he wanted. Even at work. Even if Adam was busy he’d have a way to see if Ronan was okay, or just ask how he’s doing. Know where he is, what he’s up to. Maybe Ronan would answer for him. He did it before.  
  
“Well,” Gansey flipped open the center console to trade his comb for the oversized Tom Ford sunglasses. He had a sparkle in his eye and potential dripping in the pause between them. Even him stacking his sunglasses awkwardly on top of his wireframes wasn’t enough to quell the giddy energy zipping around his chest. “Why don’t we ask the fine employees of Verizon? Wouldn’t you say that’s a plan, Mr. Adam Gansey?”  
  
“I cannot take an ounce of you seriously.” Adam laughed like he hadn’t in days, so hard it hurt his ribs, unused muscle tearing again for the first time in too long. But Gansey with a too-wide smile and sunglasses falling off his face in some sitcom ruse he’d schemed up felt a lot like sunshine after a long, long night.  
  
“My own brother!” he wailed, overdramatically fainting over the steering wheel.  
  
“Stop it, you can’t make me laugh, you’ll ruin it!” But Adam was fairly sure that things could only get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to Tori and Cat for looking this over for me!! It seemed like a rougher one than usual so I appreciate all the help!


	5. There's something inside you, It's hard to explain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the lovely Narramin drew bb Ronan from last chapter, and it's FAR too precious to NOT share. [Please take a look!](https://narrart.tumblr.com/post/188022451105/ronan-was-instantly-reminded-of-trying-to-carry)

Gansey wasn’t any less annoying at the Verizon store, even if he really thought he was being _ cool. _ The employee that helped them couldn’t seem to care about what he was saying, not nearly enough to even question if it was the truth or not. Adam supposed they got off lucky. It barely took them an hour to get ‘Mr. Adam Gansey’s’ account activated, and the only hurdle left was trying to pry Gansey off the latest and greatest models that Adam had absolutely 100% no need for.  
  
“Do you still have the flippy kind?” Adam asked, pantomiming a crab claw he realized soon after didn’t make any sense. 

Gansey, literally, gasped. 

“Adam Pa-” He coughed an awful fit, and Adam had to choke down his own laughter. “Gansey. Adam Gansey you cannot be serious. In the current year? In _ this _ modern age?”  
  
Adam tried his best to deadpan at his dramatics. But Gansey didn’t seem to be taking himself seriously, so it was hard to be earnestly frustrated with him. So he tried to keep his eyes pointed, even when his mouth curled into a lazy, lopsided smile.  
  
“I just don’t need any of the fancy stuff.” Adam picked up one of the many display models, turning it at every angle like there was something secret he could only find if it hit the light in a certain way.  
  
“If you’re really looking for a flip phone, we do have one that would run you about $100,” The tired representative pulled out a box, and opened it to reveal a thin folded piece of matte charcoal plastic to Adam. “If all you _ really _ need is service....it has service. Not a ton else. Tetris, I think. Service and Tetris.” 

The store lights hit the curved edges of the phone and it seemed even more round. Adam picked up the phone from the box, just about the size of his palm. It was small but perfectly fine for his slender, deft fingers. He pried it open with his thumb and experimentally clapped it shut.

It felt nice. 

“What would it cost monthly to pay it off?” Adam asked, keeping his hopes in check.  
  
“You’re not serious.” If the representative was tired of Gansey’s nonsense, he was downright exhausted with Adam.

And Adam knew exhausted very well. 

“It looks perfect. I’ll take it.”  
  
Adam opened his wallet and surreptitiously pulled out his Aglionby ID, thumb over any incriminating details, to the hidden hundred behind it stored away for a just-in-case scenario. It was folded onto itself so many times it looked like an origami accordion when he handed it to the attendant, along with some change he fished out of the coin pocket. Gansey shook the attendant's hand who couldn’t care less and didn’t seem thrilled to be touched, and lead both of them out of the store. The lazy chime on the door announcing their exit sounded a lot like victory bells. 

Adam shivered the moment he stepped out the door and shrugged on his jacket. He had forgotten how chilly it had gotten, and his fingertips were already turning blue in the moment they were out there. He shoved his hands, with his phone, into his coat pockets unable to resist gliding his fingers over the plastic case where no one could see it. He had to stop himself from prying it open just to feel the buttons as if they were braille and spelled out a secret message just for him. Even if Gansey and the employee who helped them weren’t impressed with the phone, it was a whole new universe to Adam and he was unexpectedly excited to explore it. 

“Let’s get some breakfast, I’m absolutely starving.” Adam almost jumped at Gansey's voice, taken out of the wind tunnel world that only consisted of him and his new technology. Adam nodded and followed Gansey to The Pig with enthusiastic hands fisted in his pockets, and fingers warm and sweaty gripped around the plastic shell.

And just like that, spring to fall, Adam Parrish had a cell phone.

* * *

Ronan woke up to the muffled sound of voices that were too fucking lively at this hour in the morning. He screwed his eyes shut as he sat up, knowing he’d probably have to _ do _something about it. Voices meant people, and people meant Gansey had some nonsense planned that he was always a part of. 

  
But he wasn’t ready to open his eyes, because his head was pounding like a fucking cheap whiskey hangover and having to face the sun sounded like absolute torture. He pawed over to grab his phone off his nightstand, completely lost balance and tumbled right out of bed when there was nothing there to keep him up.  
  
“Fucking-” Ronan’s eyes flashed open, and he rubbed the back of his head even though it didn’t hit anything but the mattress. The mattress on the floor with sheets half off of it.  
  
Gansey’s mattress. He fell asleep in Gansey’s bed.  
  
Fucking phenomenal.  
  
He wanted to throw himself right out of the Monmouth window, and that’s without the keys jingling in their janky lock and the waiting audience to his humiliation not far behind. It was kinda fucked that Ronan was more concerned about looking like a little boy who had a nightmare and ran to his mother’s bed to be soothed to sleep than he was about being found pants down and blacked out his car.  
  
He supposed he couldn’t compare something that already happened, and something he didn't have any control over to something in the here and now.

Get it together, Lynch. 

Ronan didn’t have time to even think about every fucked up milestone that fenced in his life. What he had to deal with _ currently _ was how he was going to handle his friends, right here, right now staring down his sleepy form tangled in Gansey’s sheets. The door swung open before he could even formulate the outline of a plan.  
  
“Good morning darling, did you catch up on your beauty rest?” Gansey crooned, a too enthusiastic lilt for Ronan’s sleepy sentiments. He held a tray of coffee cups like a war prize in front of him, as he leaned against the door to keep it open for Adam and Blue, apparently, to follow in after him with stacks of grease stained paper bags. They must’ve hit up Frankie’s, and only at the idea of food did Ronan realize how hungry he was. Bummer. 

“Oh, Dick, you shouldn’t have. And me without my face on.” Ronan sneered. He pulled the blankets tighter around himself, propping upright against the mattress. Everyone filed in with soft chittering greetings and plopped themselves anywhere remotely comfy to sit around Ronan. Gansey made sure to leave enough room on his bed for Blue, who was chiding him for eating where he slept but made no move to go anywhere different. Ronan already felt himself slipping away from whatever was happening, and tried to grab onto any rational idea, anything in his brain to keep him grounded to here and now. But all his thoughts were oil slicked and he kept slipping further down. 

“Why didn’t that sack of shit bird wake me up,” He murmured absentmindedly, content he got any words out at all.  
  
“I gave her a snack this morning,” Adam said with an easy smile that made Ronan’s insides melt like candle wax. It fit him like a worn in pair of jeans, the kind that finally got soft after months of uncomfortable wears and finally contoured your body. It was small and entirely non performative. Ronan’s nerve endings were exposed, raw flesh on display.  
  
But Adam didn’t touch. He just smiled and held out a paper bag, bottom shiny with fat. Ronan took it, because that’s what you were supposed to do, but didn’t really understand that it was for him. Or didn’t believe it. He wasn’t sure.  
  
“Thanks, man.” He said eyes fixed on the crumpled paper bag rather than Adam.  
  
“No Problem,” Adam lowered himself to the floor right next to Ronan, leaning against the mattress in mirrored posture. “I got a phone today.”

Now that snapped Ronan back to reality. 

“Get _out,_” He shoved Adam’s shoulder, just enough to jostle him. “Adam Parrish, man of the 21st century. I never thought I’d see the day.” 

Gansey hummed around a bite of his egg sandwich, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “Almost,” He said as a gasp as he swallowed. “It’s Adam Gansey, relic of the flip phone era.”  
  
Ronan grimaced. “What, you two get married? And I thought what we had was special.” The line was tired, and not even directed toward anyone in particular- but Noah laughed.  
  
Also, Noah was here.  
  
“Did you guys pick me up somethin?” He asked, like a flickering light bulb that finally came to full brightness after being jostled in just the right way. He was sitting on Ronan’s other side, and leaned over him, close enough he had to crane his neck back so he didn’t get a mouth full of ghost hair, so he could ‘whisper’ to Adam. “Did you really get married to Gansey?”  
  
“Can you even eat?” Ronan splayed a hand over his chest to push him back, hard enough to make him tumble a little.  
  
“I like to be involved!” Noah pouted, as he crawled upright - and onto Gansey’s bed to sit near him and Blue in childish defiance.  
  
“So that’s a no.” Ronan jabbed.  
  
“I’ll share with you, Noah. I got hashbrowns, I never finish them.” Blue offered because of course she fucking would. Ronan rolled his eyes and tried not to think too hard about the logistics of what Noah was even going to DO with them and pulled his own sandwich out from the damp paper bag. The room was weighed down with the smell of greasy potatoes and eggs cooked in too much butter, and Ronan was merely man.  
  
“So what about my other question,” All of Noah’s words were sanded down on the edges like he had his mouth full of food. Ronan wouldn’t entertain looking at him. “Adam’s married? To Gansey? I wasn’t invited.”  
  
“Gansey added me to his family plan so I could get a cheaper phone. I think I’m adopted, not married. I don’t think he’s my type.”  
  
“Not your type?” Gansey balked, scandalized enough to not worry about all the egg in his mouth while he was talking. Blue wrinkled her nose at him, and Noah laughed like it was the most hysterical thing in the world. And Gansey’s ego being bruised in the slightest of ways might be the funniest thing in the world, actually. So Ronan laughed too.  
  
Adam, sandwich half-unwrapped on his lap, and a wry smile polished on his face. “I like tall guys.” He said, and Ronan’s heart fucking stopped.  
  
Heart stopped, forgot how to breathe, mouth agape and all of the cogs in his brain spinning as fast as possible to fucking try and process what the fuck was going on.  
  
“You’re so shallow,” Blue teased, and the words sounded a lot like medics yelling _ CLEAR _ and shocking Ronan back to life. “Whoda thunk it.” She punctuated by popping the last hashbrown into her mouth.  
  
“I didn’t say only tall guys, it’s just a preference.” Adam defended, and Ronan’s pretty sure his brain snapped in twain because it meant _ he wasn’t joking. _ Gansey said Adam liked him. Adam just said he liked guys. Adam said he liked guys that were the type of guys that Ronan was, theoretically.   
  
Ronan wasn’t so great at math, but he knew when things added up in his favor.  
  
“Are you saying I’m short? Because I’m not _ that _ short. My doctor says I could still grow you know, my father grew almost an inch and a half in college.”  
  
“Would you date a guy shorter than _ you, _ Blue?” Adam asked, challenging her.  
  
“You guys aren’t listening to me,”  
  
“That’s a loaded question, Parrish. They don’t exist.” Ronan quipped just to prove to himself he could still talk, or at least sass.  
  
“That’s extremely small minded of you, Ronan. There are plenty of people shorter than me and I wouldn’t mind that about them if I was so inclined to take them out,” Whenever Blue knew she had the moral higher ground, there was a certain pentameter to her words. It drove Ronan insane.  
  
“Whatever, maggot,” Ronan said.  
  
“I really don’t think I’m short, your average is skewed by the company we keep-”  
  
“Oh my god, Gansey, nobody _ cares.” _ Blue groaned at him, and Noah laughed so hard if he was a living boy Ronan would be worried he might stop breathing. As long as he’s dead, though, let the kid have some fun.  
  
“She’s such a piece of work,” Ronan muttered to Adam, who still looked like the cat that ate the canary. Ronan loved when he had a glint of mischievousness in his eyes, it made his smile sharp and it always sent static electricity all the way down his spine. Though Ronan got that feeling from most of Adam’s smiles, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

“I thought liking tall guys was universal.” Adam shrugged, tone like a beachball bumped underhand to Ronan. For something so light and playful, it made his heart thump deep into his chest. “Don’t you?”  
  
“No. Yes. God.” Ronan dragged his hands down his face, trying to give his brain and mouth a moment to get on the same god damn page. “I guess it never mattered to me.”  
  
Ronan was doing a great job at acting like this was a normal fucking conversation, and he wasn’t losing his absolute shit about him and Adam talking about the kind of _ boys they liked _ like it was Latin homework. This day was weird. Really fucking weird.  
  
“What kind of guys do you like?”  
  
Ronan always knew when he was dreaming. It was different, a faint static hum in his ear, or the colors were a little less vibrant. Super tiny things he only noticed after years and years of dream work. He’d never confuse the worlds he made and the one he lived in.  
  
But if you told Ronan Lynch he was dreaming right now he’d probably fucking buy it. Adam never said things like _ this _ in real life. If it was a dream, Ronan could run his hands through Adam’s hair. If he was feeling bold he would say some poetic bullshit in Latin because he thinks Adam would like it and if he was honest with himself, he liked it.  
  
But Ronan didn’t have enough words in Latin, English or whatever Cabeswater gave them to explain to Adam the multitude of facets in him that doused Ronan’s life in kaleidoscope prisms. 

So he deflected. 

“Hasn’t anyone told you it’s what's on the _ inside _ that counts, Parrish?” It wasn’t a lie. Not by a far stretch, but he could twist into something with less weight, so it wouldn’t hurt as bad when it was volleyed back to him.  
  
“Ronan Lynch likes nice boys,” Adam mused, before taking a bite of his sandwich soaked with the thought. 

Even a second of that dead air made Ronan want to fucking throw something, so he busied his hands with unwrapping his own sandwich. It’d been sitting warm on his lap this entire time, and even though his stomach ached with hunger he felt bloated on the energy in the room. 

“That’s not great for your brand, haven’t you seen Grease?” Adam smiled, far to easy for someone with a blob of egg yolk on his cheek. If they were alone, and Ronan had a modicum of chill and could remember how to talk- or still have motor functions - he’d take his thumb to his cheek and wipe the smear off no problem, and like it and it would be sexy and not weird.   
  
But unfortunately Ronan hit zero of the criteria for that to happen, so he lashed out.

Business as usual. 

“Who the fuck hasn’t seen Grease. I swear it’s required reading for being a prep school douchebag.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Noah, have you seen Grease?” Adam turned, with a lilt to his voice like he knew what he was doing. Like he knew Noah would light up like a goddamn pinball machine that was just fed a quarter and he’d rant and rave and - god help us - sing.   
  
Ronan almost left the room if he didn’t know that Ganesy would come after him. He took a wolfish bite of the sandwich, trying his best to tune out Noah’s off-key warbling. That kid was gonna piss of Chainsaw soon enough, anyways.  
  
Ronan stopped chewing the moment he tasted it. He whipped his head down, and anyone looking probably thought it was because he tasted something rotten, or he was allergic to. He lifted the top of the bagel to confirm his suspicions - there was a hashbrown on his sandwich. The bacon was was nearly burnt, his egg was sunny side up and still gooey with just a drizzle of hot sauce.  
  
Adam Parrish knew his incredible convoluted sandwich order by heart. The same Adam Parrish that would scold him for ordering something that was so obnoxious to make whenever they picked up food themselves. The same Adam Parrish who insisted it would taste just as good if he ordered it normally, and just put on the hash browns himself.  
  
Ronan’s stomach was doing loops, and he wasn’t sure if he could even eat it anymore. He chomped another piece of it off just so he didn’t look like an insane person staring at a sandwich. Rather, he chewed so painfully slow that he could feel each muscle group in his jaw working individually. His heart was huge in his ribcage, and it made it hard to breathe. He knew he should thank Adam. Like, actually. He wasn’t sure if he should even bring it up. He wasn’t sure what he and Adam were, right now. Other than friends.  
  
Which was something.  
  
“Hey Parrish,” Ronan gasped, after swallowing. “Gimme your dinosaur phone so we can see if you can even text me.” 

* * *

Joseph Kavinsky must’ve loved his phone.

At least Ronan thought he had to he went through them like he went through Mitsubishi Evos and they were just as loud and flashy. He also was sure when he wasn’t harassing Ronan it was Prokopenko, or Skov or one of any interchangeable Adidas clad henchman he had. 

  
_ I’d ask u up but I know you are, Lynch _

_ I’ll even let you bring your girlfriends, im not threatened _

_ We can have fun, I’m great in front of an audience _

Kavsinsky kept texting, one after another in seconds. Ronan would open every one of them and assess it with tired, glazed over eyes. He felt like Pavlov's fucking dog. Phone buzz, pick up, feel empty on an astrological and indigestible level. Repeat until you get a treat. 

Ronan would like to think he was too higher functioning to fall victim to classical conditioning but he sure kept doing it. 

“I really don’t think you should go.”  
  
Ronan’s eyes stayed glued on the phone, burning dry from the dim glow. He should’ve jumped, or sworn, or whatever the stuff he did when Noah surprised him. Every inch of his body felt lead heavy, and even blinking seemed strained as if rusted. He turned the boy, kicking his feet off the edge of his bed. His hair looked platinum white in the moonlight, and Noah sickly shade of pale. Ronan could almost imagine his corpse like this, and even that barely made his heart beat faster.  
  
It was nothing compared to the hummingbird that trapped in his ribs when Kavinsky texted him.  
  
“We need to put a bell on you.” The light on Ronan’s phone long since dimmed, and his tone matched it in energy. “Where the fuck have you been, anyway?”  
  
“You didn’t want me around,” Noah said looking a lot like how he must’ve did when his mother found the empty bottle of her birthday schnapps. “So I gave you some space.”  
  
Ronan wrinkled his nose. It was always frustrating how much more Noah knew about them than they knew about him. This was more than frustrating, though. Right now it felt like Noah was tearing off a scab and prying open the wound.  
  
“What makes you think I want you around now?” He sneered.  
  
Noah, put a hand on the back of his head, mussing up his hair. “You’re.....less.” He said it like it was the dictionary definition of what was going on, universally accepted. “It’s not as busy, or loud, or something. I don’t _ want _ to go away, you know.”  
  
Ronan stayed laying down on his bed, arms folded across his chest, looking at Noah from the corner of his eye.  
  
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry champ.” Ronan didn’t sound sincere.  
  
“I don’t mean just like, existing. Though I do like that,” Noah wormed his way between Ronan and the comforters shoved up against the walls, pushing him clear to the other side of his bed.  
  
“Hey!” Ronan warned, thinning his eyes into something he hoped was dangerous. Noah giggled at him. Fucking typical.  
  
“I like being your friend. I wanna be there when you’re hurting.” Noah’s voice was as airy as anything else about him. His emotions like fluffy meringue offered up without a second thought. Ronan really wasn’t one for sweets.  
  
“I’m doing fine, shithead. Breathing and everything.” Ronan turned away from Noah, and the window, much more comfortable with his entire world in shadow.  
  
“Ronan.” Noah whined. He tugged on the back of his hoodie, hard enough he must’ve gotten a glimpse of beaks and claws crawling out from his skin. “You’re doing that thing you do. Trying to make me forget with jokes and stuff.”  
  
“Deflecting?” Ronan offered, even though he knew better.  
  
“Yeah! You’re deflecting!” Noah cheered, because he was fucking impossible. “You’re hurting a lot and you don’t know how to say it or what to do with it.”  
  
“If you’re gonna be like this I’ll just leave.” Ronan threatened. Noah only tugged on his hood harder. 

“No, Ronan.” He whined like a child who wasn’t ready for bedtime “Then you’ll go see Kavinsky and you’ll feel even _ worse. _” 

Well, he wasn’t wrong. Ronan was more than willing to moonwalk out of this convo, call Kavinsky whatever name felt the most appropriate and drive so fast he gave himself fucking whiplash.  
  
And like on fucking cue, Ronan’s phone woke to life with light and sound and a preview of a text from Kavinsky that just read _ image attached. _

How could he resist. 

In too-sharp 12 megapixel quality there it was, Kavinsky’s dick hard and proud against the steering wheel of his fucking car.  
  
Because, obviously. 

Ronan hated that he couldn’t stop staring. He hated Noah looking over his shoulder with a brand of wonder Ronan couldn’t quite define.  
  
What he hated the most though, is how he could feel his own cock twitch in his jeans. He hated that it was kind of fucking working.  
  
Kavinsky was an asshole. A complete and total douchebag with a crooked smile and eyes too sunken in his face. He wasn’t good looking, objectively. Subjectively, he wasn’t even close to Ronan’s type.

But without his douchebag sneer, and his lingering weed scent - he was different. This was a faceless Kavinsky. It was pure sexuality framed in sweat-soaked abs proud and exposed from a pulled up white muscle tank, and thick cock propped up with his sturdy hands. 

Ronan couldn’t look away from his hands. Rugged fingers into a sturdy wrist that could fucking make his car sing all the way across Henreitta.

He wasn’t as off-putting as usual.  
  
And that made Ronan hate himself so much he thought he’d be sick.  
  
“No wonder he acts like he’s king shit. Jesus.” Noah gawked, fingers stilled curled into the fleece lined hood. Ronan swatted Noah away with some of his more personalized and vulgar insults, loud enough to mask how he was relieved for Noah to pull him out of whatever morally torturous libido fueled haze he was slipping into.  
  
“You’re not gonna let him treat you like shit because he has a nice dick? Like, you know that thing is attached to _ Kavinsky _ , right?”  
  
“Dude, it’s more fucking complicated than that.” Ronan snapped, out of any of his reserves he used deflecting. Fresh out of jokes, sarcasm the fucking works. All he had was angry coals that had been simmering the bottom of his chest since this whole fucking thing started, getting stoked and smothered and all it left him with was a head full of trapped smoke.  
  
Ronan just wanted to fucking breathe.  
  
“I know, Ro.” Noah flopped over, and rested his head on Ronan’s shoulder. Every sentence in the Ronan Lynch playbook said to throw him out the goddamn window again. But his cool breath on his face felt just like the nighttime breeze on top of their biggest barn, where his dad would point out constellations to him and Declan. He hadn’t thought about the wonder he found in the stars that made up Corvus in a long, long time.  
  
“What the hell, don’t call me that,” He muttered, shrugging hard enough to jostle Noah but nothing with any real force behind it.  
  
“You don’t like it? I thought we were having a moment.” His voice was muffled from the angle his cheek was smashed into Ronan’s arm.  
  
“We still _ are _ having a moment, dipshit, moments don’t require weird nicknames.” Ronan’s eyes were fixed out the window, to the faintest blinking stars he could see through monmouth's Halogen fog. His words come out too soft, and Ronan wonders if his voice is out there, too.  
  
“I don’t think they require name calling either!” Noah gave Ronan a head butt that weak and lazy as a needy kitten.

“Fine. Truce.” Ronan scrubbed a hand over his face and only hoped that the shifting of his shoulder would be enough to shove Noah away. He was so stubborn, sometimes.  
  
“I get it, though. We all have complicated relationships where you get hurt.” Noah’s tone was lacquer poured in thick enough coats to smooth out any cracks in his words. Any amount of polish on Noah was extremely strange, and it made Ronan feel like that maybe they were having a serious conversation.  
  
Which was only a little mortifying.  
  
“Yeah, I guess that kinda is your wheelhouse, huh,” Ronan said, with his own spit polish cadence.  
  
“Eh,” Noah rolled his head off Ronan’s shoulder and stretched his arms up to the moonlight so hard his hands faded away. He arched his back and switched which legs he was sitting on. Through all of the fussy little movements, he was just far enough away from Ronan where he could make direct eye contact. Ronan gulped, but his mouth was dry. 

“It’s not the same. Everyone's situation is unique and all but like...I think I understand what you’re feeling, but like....you know what Kavinsky did was bad to you, right?”

“It’s not like I stopped him, or whatever.” And Ronan felt as if he coughed up something black and rancid that had been jammed in his throat since he took that beer from Kavinsky. “Look, if you suck at driving you’ll spin out and fucking crash. I’m not gonna blame the fucking car for that.”  
  
If Noah had a still beating heart, Ronan was sure it would’ve stopped. All that was left of him was a stardust shape of a boy before he shook his head to bring back all the color he could muster.  
  
“Holy shit, Ronan, no. It’s like, not even a good comparison. Like, at all.” His hands were balled up in his Super Mario pajama pants so hard Ronan thought he might worry a hole through them. Noah would be pissed, those were his favorite. He only clenched his hands tighter. “You didn’t choose what he did to you it’s not like....a side effect of your bad behavior. Kavinsky’s shitty behavior is a direct effect of his....shitty behavior!”  
  
Ronan acted like there was something fervently more interesting across the room locked in Chainsaw’s cage. He traced the rise and fall of her sleeping form with distinct engrossment while his heart pounded at thrice the speed of her breaths. 

Ronan kept his eyelids low, posture casual, and his words as far away as he could keep them from his heart. 

“You don’t get it Noah,”  
  
“So, like, was it my bad I was murdered?” Noah’s words were flippant. He wasn’t yelling, maybe a little riled up, but nothing with the ferocity that Ronan felt the wind knocked out of him. “If I was smarter, more aware of the company I kept would that have changed anything? If it was Gansey or Adam who got rap-”  
  
“Enough!” Ronan yelled, loud enough that Chainsaw raised an alerted beak toward him. Ronan was too busy snarling to give himself the chance even catch a breath. “I’m not a fucking victim.”  
  
“It’s not a bad thing.” Noah was flippant about this, too. And that, for some reason doused Ronan. He was stuck between that level of angry and miserable and overall more confused than any emotion with teeth. He wondered if Noah got that because Ronan was pretty sure he was hyperventilating and staring at his comforter like it was a window to a different plane of existence, and Noah just shrugged. 

“I know how it feels to have someone do something bad to you. It doesn’t make you less than. Well, I’m kinda less than in the sense I blip in and out. But you’re super alive, so you’re especially not-less-than.” 

“Fucking hell,” Ronan said it not like a realization, but more like he got a question wrong on a test and he had known the answer. Like any of life's unkindness to him was extraordinarily mundane. Just like that, Ronan’s blood flowed back into all of his limbs, his vision crystal clear, and his blood pressure close to where it should be.  
  
“You wanna look at the stars? There’s a ladder on the side of Monmouth.” Noah offered, already moving to open the window.  
  
Ronan frowned at him but decided he’d let him off the hook for rifling through his head.  
  
“You are so fucking creepy, you know that?” Ronan shoved himself off his bed, cracking his back in the process. I’m gonna grab a beer, you want one?”  
  
“Yeah! Do you have a sour?” Noah flashed in front of him, smiling so hard his cheeks were pushed up into his eyes.  
  
“You can’t drink it, Dumba-,” Ronan bit his tongue, remembering the rules. “Noah. Yeah, I have a fucking sour give me a minute.”  
  
Ronan didn’t take long to rummage through the kitchen and grab two bottles from the fridge, before peering out the window to trace Noah’s path, up the ladder where he sat waving from the top of the roof. Ronan huffed as he shoved the two bottles into his pockets so he could hoist himself up the ladder as easily as he could muster for dangling at least two stories from the ground. He could feel his stomach drop, as he clung to the rust stained wrought iron, and it was almost comforting. Ronan spent a moment, reveling in the thrill of wanting to live as he climbed over the lip of the roof, and handed Noah his beer.  
  
“What the fuck do you think that ladder is even for,” Ronan asked, popping the cap off of his own bottle. “Clearly it’s not any safety measure. Gansey would shit himself if he knew this place wasn’t up to code.”  
  
Noah laughed at that, holding the bottle with both of his hands.  
  
“There’s a pool table next to his bed and a toilet across from the stove. Nothing about this place is up to anyone's code. That’s why he loves it.”  
  
“He needs to stop playing with so many broken toys.”  
  
“Oh my god are we still talking about this.” Noah groaned.  
  
“It’s a joke, calm down.” Ronan elbowed him in the ribs, it made Noah spill some of his beer on himself. “I’ll give you ten bucks if you can point out five constellations.”  
  
Noah beamed brighter than any star in the sky, which was stupid. He had absolutely no need for money. In his living days he could stand to wipe his ass with a ten dollar bill. Ronan had a hunch, however, that Noah liked games.  
  
“Okay-okayokay,” Noah muttered, brow knit and chin tilted up. Ronan followed his gaze to the blinking clusters of light. It was a little hard to see them through the fog of Monmouth's floodlights. Next time he was up here he’d definitely kill the switch. They were still wondrous, far away from what could be considered the bustling part of Henrietta - but he bet it’d look almost like they did as a kid without the light pollution. He’d have to try it out before bringing Adam up here.  
  
Which was almost as stupid a thought as a ghost triyng to win ten bucks from star trivia. Maybe Ronan simply liked the game of it, kind of like Noah.  
  
“Orion!” Noah barked out, pointing towards the trio of stars that made up his belt.  
  
“That barely counts. Everyone knows Orion.”  
  
“Big dipper!” He yelled again, shifting his pointed hand over.  
  
“That’s Ursa Minor, get out of here.” Ronan shoved him again, but Noah laughed this time and he couldn’t help but crack a smile too. Things felt extremely normal. Like before his dad died normal. Even if he was on top of an old factory rather than his barns, and with a ghost instead of his older brother.  
  
“Hey,” Ronan started, soft around the edges. “You wanna go see if Gansey’s busy? If he’s not having phone sex with Blue he could come up here.”  
  
“Gross.” Noah sneered, but set his beer down and made his way down the ladder.  
  
“Tell him to kill the lights!” Ronan called after him. It was only 3 swings of beer later, that the lights blacked out in a crash, and every watercolor tone of the night sky was visible. The window scraped open again, with Noah and a very confused Gansey’s banter filling the silence. Ronan pat the phone in his pocket, tempted to take a picture before he could get caught - but maybe that was something he could also do with Adam.  
  
“You two are drinking on _ the roof _ , you’re going to kill yourselves,” Gansey, balked, white knuckled around the wrought iron.  
  
“Been there, done that. Hurry up Gasney, I’m tired of looking at your bony butt.”  
  
Gansey scoffed, scandalized but still moved his aforementioned bony butt right next to Ronan. Ronan couldn’t help but let a grin unfurl across his face at Gansey’s concerned brand of wonder. He leaned over far enough to invade anyone's definition of personal space.  
  
“I’ll give you ten bucks if you find Ophiuchus. ”  
  
“Hey! How come he only has to find one!” Noah complained, flopping himself down on the other side of Ronan. “And he can see them so much easier! They look like glitter up there.” Noah was awestruck, and Ronan found it impossible to be mad at him about it. The burn from toasty orange of Henrietta lights melted into ombre of blues and purples of the night sky flecked with the strobing lights.

Ronan, for a fleeting moment, thought he might see what Gansey saw in the place.  
  
“Did you really bring me up here to brush up on my star chart?” Gansey raised an eyebrow at Ronan. Ronan traced the lines across Scorpius to help him find the courage to be rather candid.  
  
“Nah. I wanted to talk about making shit up to Parrish,” Ronan said. It was odd, that the plated creature helped him take down his own defenses.  
  
“You know he doesn’t mind,” Noah added, with a layer of confidence that suggested it was factual.  
  
“I feel like a dick though. No pun intended.”  
  
“You could dream him something,” Gansey offered. “A car?” Gansey said it tentatively as if grasping at the sheer conceptuality of it. Ronan wrinkled his nose.  
  
“He’d hate that. I don't want to dream it, anyway. I want something I have to work for, you know?”  
  
“Ronan, don’t diminish your skills. Your dreaming is something exceptional.” Gansey said it out of breath, and Ronan was happy for the sheet of darkness to cover any color on his cheeks. His Irish blood kept him too honest.  
  
“That’s not what I meant,” Ronan said, as close to a thank you as he could muster at the moment. “I just...want it to be something on his terms. So he knows what I put into it, you know?” His words came out raw, and a scratchy in his throat. They sounded so unfamiliar and tender he felt the need to rub his neck like he strained it.  
  
“Well,” Gansey started. “You know him best of all. My insight or Noah’s wouldn’t be as whole.” 

Ronan huffed. He knew Gansey wasn’t incorrect - and he wasn’t even mad at the implication. He just wanted a thread to grab to make unraveling the psyche of Adam Parrish a little easier for himself.  
  
“Just think of things he likes!” Noah splayed his palm out in front of him, unfurling a single finger and diligently counting on it with his other hand.“School....” Noah stretched out a second finger but paused. “Work? I’m out, I don’t think I even know Adam’s favorite pizza topping.”

Gansey sighed. “You know, you already answered your own question. You don't want to dream because it’s a skill foreign for Adam.” Gansey made questioning eye contact with Ronan, waiting for the nod that told him he was on the right track. “Likewise, you don't want to buy him something as money is not a resource that you value on the same level that he does. So the gift wouldn’t have the same impact. You just need to think of what Adam Parrish would do for Adam Parrish.”

It was like Gansey switched off the floodlights in his brain, and he could see Adam’s constellation as clearly as the dozens in front of his eyes. It was more wondrous than any cluster of stars, and Ronan couldn’t help but grin like a maniac.  
  
“Dick, don’t ever let me say you never did anything for me.” Ronan’s smile was twisted wryly into a shape that usually meant trouble - or at least that he was thinking too hard. He slapped Gansey on the back, and he coughed a terrified sound before he scrambled back down the ladder into his room to grab his jacket. 

“He really dragged me up here for that? Honestly.” Gansey huffed, but Ronan could hear the shape of a smile in his voice even through Noah’s approving laughter. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you endlessly to Tori for the Beta! You're an angel.


	6. They're talking about you boy, but you're still the same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for coming with me on this journey! It wasn't an easy one and not one that's yet over. Trauma isn't a climax in anyone's life, but something you carry with you every day and accustom to the shape and weight of it and get more tools to manage it. 
> 
> But! Having a support system can make it all a little less daunting to manage (:
> 
> I cannot express enough how much it means to me that you all spent time reading this! This project is insanely near and dear to me and being able to share it with you guys and have people resonate with it is humbling and moving. I do have another project planned, but it will be significantly lighter!! I hope it will be enjoyed as well (:

Ronan turned his phone on Do Not Disturb. He texted Gansey that he’d be out for the night, and he’d call him if he needed anything. He texted Adam to tell him when his next night off was, preferably a weekend. He sent Matthew a stupid meme, and he even texted Declan to leave him the fuck alone.   
  
He didn’t text Kavinsky anything.    
  


* * *

  
Adam didn’t really have any nights  _ off.  _ But the factory was closed for the weekend so their distributors could catch up with demand, and he had Saturdays off at Boyd’s so he had more time than most.   
  
_ I close on friday, but I’m free after. _

This was probably the first time he told Ronan a bald-faced lie. Adam got out at 8.    
  
_ Nice _

_ I’ll come over around 11 _

_ Or you want me to pick you up? _ _   
_ _   
_ Guilt pooled in his gut to lie to Ronan again, even if it was technically harmless.    
  
_ No. It gives me time to shower and change. I’ll see you around then. _

11\. 11 gave Adam just enough time to get things set up and be able to actually change and shower. He was trying to map out the logistics to time everything exactly the right way so his chips would fall where they needed to. It was tight, but he could do it.

But good lord would it be easier with his goddamn bicycle. 

Adam didn’t let himself mourn and crawled onto his mattress. He needed a good night's sleep so he’d have the energy to pull this off.  


* * *

Ronan had arrived at St. Agnes at 10:30 on the nose. He saw the light on in Adam’s little attic hovel but circled the block - the long way - two more times anyways. 

  
This was stupid. This was incredibly fucking stupid.    
  
Out of all the things to scare him - night horrors, the photo negative of his father's corpse, the fact he hadn’t blocked Kavinsky’s number - Adam Parrish shouldn’t be sitting on top of that list like a king to a throne.    
  
The whole point of this was that he  _ liked  _ Adam. You shouldn’t be fucking terrified of your crush. 

Whatever.    
  
So Ronan pulled into the church at 10:46 pm, his roiling anxiety flooding any attempt of politeness to the point of drowning. He slammed his door especially loud, in case Adam was still in the shower, and popped the trunk.    
  
He hovered over the shadowy cavern, wondering briefly if his father looked like this over his dream things he’d hock to millionaires. He was suddenly relieved that he didn’t dream up anything for Adam if just not for the comparison to weigh heavy on his conscience. Well, mostly.    
  
He really didn’t have the time to unpack this. He took a mouthful of crisp winter air and held it in his lungs until he could feel the frost clinging to his ribs. He exhaled in a thick puff, glittery under decorative lanterns bookending the giant mahogany door to the church.    
  
Ronan thought, briefly, that he wanted to step inside St. Agnes. That the red velvet under his knees and his head bowed in darkness could give him some more sense of peace, or familiarity. But his phone was heavy in his back pocket, and he didn’t think he could keep Adam waiting for anyone right now.    
  
He slipped his phone neatly into his hand and tapped on Adam’s number. He could hear some soft synth-like electronic sounds coming from his room, and it made his heart warm that maybe it was something Adam picked out just for  _ him. _   
  
“Hullo?” Adam answered, too confused to keep the syrupy drawl from his voice, but swiftly corrected himself. “Is everything okay, Ronan?”   
  
“Hey asshole,” Ronan grinned, peering up to see if he could see Adam through his tiny sliding window. “I’m outside.”    
  
“Good for you.” He sounded exasperated, or relieved. “You know where the door is.”    
  
“And here I thought Aglionby was supposed to groom little gentleman. Could you stand to meet your date at the goddamn door?”    


“You’re a menace, Lynch. I’ll be down in a second.”    
  
“Put on shoes, it’s cold as balls out.” Even Ronan had his coat on, not just because he didn’t want Adam to scold him about being irresponsible.    
  
“Why are you making me do this again?” Adam sighed.   
  
“It’ll be worth your while, I promise. Just get down here.”    
  
“Fine,” Adam said, with as much finality as the tone letting him know the call was over. Ronan slid the phone back in his pocket and rubbed his hands together until he heard the creak of the rickety old door at the top of the wrought iron stairs.    
  
“ _ Jesus. _ ”   
  
Ronan heard Adam hiss from the top of his stairs, before the soft hollow steps that implied he was probably wearing his shower shoes, or slippers instead of anything that’d actually fend off the cold. Ronan moved to spread his arms as far as they could stretch over the trunk. He inhaled, watching Adam turn the corner like he was some kind of mark, and he knew he looked entirely too severe. He tried to loosen his shoulders and  _ chill the fuck out _ and try not to look like he had to hide a god damn body.    
  
And it might be too late because Adam was staring at him like the hypothetical blood was still on his hands. Whatever face he was making to look normal must’ve been more of a pained grimace because Adam didn’t even look mad, just concerned for Ronan’s well being.    
  
Breathe in, Lynch. Play it fucking cool.    
  
“Look,” Ronan started, hand against his temple. “Don’t make it fucking weird, okay? You’ve,” Ronan’s throat was suddenly as dry as the air around him and he swallowed to no avail. Adam stood glowing dark in the lamplight, ethereal like he was some marble carved angel that belonged to the church. 

“You’ve done a lot for me lately. And I just wanted to say thanks and actually fucking mean it. So don’t get pissy with me because I got you something - it’s no more than you did for me, okay?” Ronan could feel his tone go a little off the rails, and his face was getting too hot but he could blame the bite of the air on that. Adam looked almost amused. He wasn’t angry, wasn’t confused, and had this easy grin on his face and his arms wrapped around his body. He didn’t say anything and waited for Ronan to go at his own pace.   
  
Ronan reached into his trunk, and unearthed Adam’s bike, better than ever and plopped it on the ground.    
  
“My bike,” Adam said, as if he didn’t believe it. “How’d ya even find it?”    


Ronan rubbed his neck just to keep it from covering his eyes. Adam’s smile was so much brighter than unassuming church lamps and he felt too exposed in front it.    
  
“I looked. Hard. Chainsaw helped, she likes shiny things.” Ronan realized that he didn’t explain much, really. But Adam nodded vigorously, and let his slender fingers drag down the cool metal of the bike frame. There were still bits of grease under his fingernails he must not have been able to scrub away in the shower.    
  
“Ronan, it looks good as new - better than. You replaced the housing and cables...and new derailleurs? How did you even know how to do this?”    
  
With a lot of swear words, several hours of youtube videos on repeat and parental supervision from an insomnia ridden Gansey.    
  
“I’m pretty good with my hands,” Ronan started, before Adam’s wide deer in the headlight eyes made him realize how that is under no circumstances the right thing to say. “Farm stuff.”    
  
Good one, Lynch.    
  
Adam hummed and Ronan thinks he probably understood the meaning, even if the words were dumb. He dragged his digits down to the tires and gave them an experimental squeeze.    
  
“What......are these?”    
  
Ronan scrubbed his face with a hand and wished he wore a hoodie he could hide under instead of distressed black denim that couldn’t shield him from the cold nor his emotions.    
  
“They’re...snow tires. Kinda.” Ronan started. “They can adapt to terrain through air pressure, and the ridges will extend under pressure, and the metal points will sharpen at certain temperatures.”    
  
Adam’s brow knit in on itself, and he stared at Ronan like he was a physics problem. Ronan screwed his eyes shut, and sighed so deep even he could admit it was  _ maybe _ a little dramatic.    
  
“I couldn’t find any snow tires for bikes in town so I fuckin’ dreamt them.” He admitted, exasperated. Adam still gawked at him, and he could feel himself going so pink he couldn’t blame the November air. “Look, I know it’s cheating - or whatever, but I wanted to give you this tonight and I-”   
  
“It’s incredible.” Adam’s voice was a pin dropping in Ronan’s mosh pit brain, but he was so attuned to Adam Parrish he heard it in crystal clarity. “You’re...you’re so incredibly clever. I can't believe you thought of this.” 

Ronan, always the worshipper and never the worshipped, didn’t quite know what to do with that. Of the few and far between compliments he got nowadays, rarely were they  _ clever.  _ Part of it him was so warm from the inside out, so light felt like he could fly. Another part of him was so wildly embarrassed and unequipped for such things he wanted sling himself out a window. But the part of him that was here for Adam, thanked him. Small, awkward and barely audible; but it pulled an easy smile out of Adam lopsided so wide he could see his snaggletooth in the back of his mouth.    
  
He was smitten.   
  
“I usually lock it outside, but I think, um-” Seeing Adam Parrish flustered was also something that made Ronan’s heart swell in a way he wasn’t attuned to. He felt bad gaping dully while Adam was clearly rifling through plan A through Z Ronan had no prior knowledge of but he was merely man. But being merely man was one of his strong points, too.   
  
“I can carry it up. It’s not a big deal.” Ronan sniffed. Adam laughed at him.   
  
“You think I can’t handle this myself? I do manual labor all day long, Ronan.” There was a shard of a challenge lodged deep below Adam’s cornea, and it shone like a diamond chip even in the moonlight. It might be his favorite thing about Adam. That was an ever changing crown, however, with every new facet he’s able to gleam of Adam Parrish.    
  
“Maybe I was trying to be a gentleman. Fuck, Parrish.” Ronan sneered at him, and Adam punched him in the arm.    
  
“It’d be the first time in your life,” He grinned, then shoved his hands into his jacket pocket. “Fine, carry it upstairs. Let’s just go in before my toes freeze off.”    
  
Adam turned on his heel to trot back up the stairs. Ronan hoisted the bike over his shoulder and followed him. It was very minor, and he knew that Adam could absolutely do this himself. But Ronan felt a swell of pride for just being able to do something for Adam. It was an emotion strong enough, he felt he could climb these stairs 50 times over, even in the cold, running purely off this emotion. Which is what he’d blame, for running clear into Adam at the landing to his apartment and dropping the bike right onto the wood with a dull  _ thunk _ .    
  
“Jesus, Parrish,” Ronan hissed, but Adam wore a smile tied tight with something Ronan couldn’t put his finger on. Whatever it was, it was impossible to stay angry at him. It was his turn for confusion, and Adam relished in it.    
  
“Thank you, Ronan.” He said, and he said it like he meant it as much as Aglionby. As Ivy League. As Cabeswater. 

As Magic.

And Ronan had to do everything he could not to look away.    
  
“I told you not to be weird,” he muttered.    
  
“Thanking you for a gift isn’t weird. It’s not supposed to be anyway. What’s gonna be weird is now I gotta thank you.”    
  
“That’s not what this is about, you don’t have to do-”   
  
“Luckily it’s already set up, so you can’t tantrum about it.” Adam smiled so wide Ronan could count his teeth if he was so inclined, and if it was socially acceptable he might have been.    
  
“I wasn’t fucking throwing a goddamn  _ tantrum, _ ” He hissed. Adam elbowed him, and he elbowed him back.    
  
“Sure, Ronan. Just get inside before one of us gets sick.”    
  
Adam turned, and the door creaked open. Ronan sucked in a breath as he kept himself braced for anything, and the wind was knocked out of him still when he stepped inside of Adam’s apartment. 

Warm, it was the first thing he felt. Adam closed the door behind him, and the whistling wind was tamped to a hum behind the thin pine door. Ronan’s world and entire being thawed from the inside out.    
  
Adam Parrish’s apartment was, to any discerning eye, pathetic. A stack of milk crates on wood beams with a mattress barely large enough to fit his lanky limbs. Unfurnished, unwelcoming, and utilitarian at best.   
  
Ronan could close a blind eye to it, now. Adam’s apartment was littered in tea lights, dozens of them on any surface they could reach, and gathered like a centerpiece clustered in the very center of the room. There, Adam pushed enough of his milk crates together to drape something close enough to a tablecloth to finish the illusion of it. On top was a pile of take out boxes, all paper rather than styrofoam and closed together with a red piece of tape.   
  
Adam went to the  _ good  _ Chinese place, and Ronan’s mouth was watering even though he wasn’t hungry. He looked over to Adam, and he was sure the confusion in his eyes bled into wonder and made him look something softer and younger than himself.   
  
“What the fuck.”    
  
Because it was all that he could manage.    
  
It was Adam’s turn to look bashful, and even the yellow drenched backdrop of the tealights wasn’t enough to hide the color on his face.    
  
“I just wanted to see if it was somethin’ you might like,” Adam said it to the floorboards, and Ronan was immediately in that sleepy pub hovering over a plate of greasy wings at nearly 2 am. 

“You,” Ronan breathed. “Are so fucking ridiculous.”    
  
“Just take the free food, Lynch. Don’t make this harder for the both of us.” It was impossible for Adam to sound remotely put out with his words wrapped around his wry smile, and Ronan was not strong enough to resist the siren song of Adam’s retreating form. So he sat across from him and actively tried to not knock over of the dumb battery operated candles while Adam plated some crispy shrimp next to a stack of delicately fried eggrolls.    
  
After he shoved one into his mouth without so much as thinking about it, he caught a metallic flash in the corner of his eye. He peered over to a sweating 6 pack of Yuengling, brassy eagle proud on the can glowing bronze in the LED light of candles. 

“You don’t drink,” Ronan said.    
  
“I don’t,” He swallowed. “but I hear you should offer your date one.”    
  
Ronan stared at the warped, mahogany reflection of himself in the can. This was surreal. He couldn’t believe it was transpiring, but it didn’t have all the soft edges that his dreams did. In his dreams it wasn’t quite so easy, either. The Adam in his dreams was coy, sharp and, well, rather clever. Having Adam come to him with clumsy displays of affection, and deem Ronan the clever one was never the way this played out in his hundreds of fantasies; Yet too inconceivable to be in any of his realities.    
  
He looked up to Adam, frowning into fried rice, bottom lip worried between his teeth. He sighed, and put down his plastic fork he was gripping like a life preserver.    
  
“Look, Ronan. It doesn’t have to be anything, I just thought...I don’t know. Maybe-”    
  
Ronan leaned over the table to kiss him. 

And it was unlike any high he had ever felt before. The powdery scent of Adam’s shampoo mixed with the heavy, greasy aroma of their takeout into something that shouldn't have smelled even remotely pleasant. It probably didn’t, but it gave Ronan a head rush like swinging to unknown altitudes. He was mid air, catapulted straight into everything that was  _ Adam _ with no fear of crash landing.    
  
And Adam kissing back was every constellation in the night sky condensed into a brilliant burning supernova of an emotion that made his entire body hot with want for something he didn’t have a word to fully encompass the magnitude of.    
  
But he wanted more; so, so, so much more. Enough to overload every sense and go stupid with it. Forget every word in any language, and live in simply ADAM. 

Ronan lived there so long he only pulled back for air when is most primal senses were alarm bells warning him he had to breathe to live.    
  
What the what a thrill it was to remember how alive he was, in a world with Adam Parrish. If he had the space, in the moment, to think outside of the walls of this apartment, he thinks he’d think of all the others that filled his world with light, and maybe love.    
  
“Wow,” Adam breathed. His words were wonder wrapped up in country twang like the Henrietta breeze on a warm summer night. The kind that puts a chill on your sweat moist skin, and makes you feel like you could take on the world. Adam Parrish, the magician, conjuring cozy summer warmth while it was barely a few degrees from snowing outside. He was truly something incredible. And Ronan had kissed him.   
  
Ronan had  _ kissed  _ him.    
  
“Fuck,” Ronan’s tone was raw like it was his first word in days.    
  
“Aren’t we eloquent.” Adam punctuated the words with a giggle that fluttered like starlight. “Let’s-” He started, looking to the food, then to Ronan then to his bed like some long-form math problem. The gears were turning in his head but perhaps for the first time in his life, Ronan figured it out much faster.   
  
Horny greater than Hungry. It’s not fucking rocket science.    
  
So he held Adam’s hand and tilted his head to Adam’s mattress. Adam Parrish was an incredibly quick study and Ronan was dragged down to the mattress, tied up in Adam’s smile. Ronan dragged his hands, slow as dripping honey up Adam’s face so his fingers could intertwine between strands of his hair. Adam’s hands were pressed against his lower back. They were close enough that Ronan could smell the few savory bites of food on his breath. Easily close enough to kiss. But they stayed entwined in each other, like finely woven macrame. Something artistic, yet utilitarian and so, so, so, much stronger knotted together than trying to hold any weight themselves.    
  
There was a part of him, animal brained, that wanted to capture Adam’s lips with the same compulsion Chainsaw had to anything that glimmered. But he felt he’d get stupid with it. He’d get drunk on Adam’s kisses and he couldn’t numb his mind to actually processing any of this.    
  
But Adam looked at him, eyes dark like the ocean floor but lofty as the bubbles floating to the surface, and he leaned up and Ronan was only man. He wasn’t going to push him  _ away.  _ So Adam kissed him, slow and languid, with just a brush of his tongue before pulling back.    
  
“I could kiss you all night long.”

Ronan wanted to drown in his crooner’s voice, smooth as single malt with none of the burn. 

“Is that a challenge, Parrish. You know I’m competitive.” Ronan smiled, and hid it with a kiss to his ear.    
  
“Only if you accept.” Adam smiled that wry, sneaky smile that made Ronan’s heart do backflips. Ronan was about to dive in for another kiss, but he saw Adam’s biting his lip, again. He moved a hand to brush his bangs back and tilted his head up so he could have a better look at his sea storm eyes.    
  
Ronan wanted to tell Adam  _ “You’re On”  _ and kiss him with 250 horsepower - and there was a sudden flash of Kavinsky grinning face, shadowy and cut red with dash lights. 

And he stopped breathing.    
  
Ronan could easily load in the film reel of that night, all his memories beer bled and blurry. He could relive the sensation of phantom lips on his chest, mind too far away to process where the stimuli were coming from.    
  
But this was supposed to be different. This was the boy of Ronan’s dreams, and he wasn’t going to have a fucking meltdown and ruin it. The whole point was trying to repay Adam for everything he did for him.    
  
Lynch’s were fighters. They’d claw, and kick and scream - but they didn’t back down. Ronan inhaled, deep, close his eyes and dived for Adam’s belt. Rip the fucking bandaid off.   
  
“Ronan!”    
  
Ronan snapped up at the distress in his voice. Adam’s fingers were dug into Ronan’s shoulders pushing him just far enough away enough he could see his eyes shake like he was about to get hurt - or worried Ronan was.    
  
Fuck.   
  
“Not.....You don’t...gotta.” Adam blurted. “You never have to accept. It just feels weird saying it out loud, I shouldn’t have to. Not because of you, god, sorry. I’m not handling this well.”   
  
Adam must have felt Ronan’s entire body tense because every feature strained across his delicate cheekbones, skin taut with worry.    
  
Because he didn’t think of how complicated all of this was until just then. It seemed so simple - Adam equals good. Ronan didn’t think Adam Parrish was capable of crumbling his world and ego through any means.    
  
But Ronan’s world was already in shambles. He barely just found the fortitude to begin to pick up the pieces, and it was only because he had Adam’s and Gansey’s and Noah’s example to follow. It felt risky to engage in something similar to the disaster that razed him down, and not in a thrilling way.    
  
Ronan refused to drown in Adam’s gaze, not when he chartered a lifeboat for him already. Ronan closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. He rolled some strands of Adam’s hair between his fingers, soft and twiney to the touch.    
  
This was good.    
  
And maybe he was still scared, even if he was logically  _ ‘fine’. _

Maybe he wasn’t fine, actually. Maybe it was fine that he wasn’t fine. 

Maybe he didn’t need to figure it out all at once. Maybe he could just do what felt good in this moment, the worry about the next.    
  
One step at a time, with Adam by his side.   
  
This was fine.    
  
This was good.

“This is good,” Ronan said it out loud, to make it easier to believe. He dragged Adam’s hands slowly up, calloused digits caressing his lips. He placed a kiss on top of a knuckle. “I like this,” he placed a kiss on the next. “I dunno what’s best for me, right now,” Another. “But I like this.” And the last “A lot.”    
  
Adam blushed so hard Ronan could make out freckles even in the artificial glow of the candlelight.    
  
“Let’s eat. Food’ll get cold, but I’m not going anywhere.” Adam’s back cracked as he wiggled to an upright position, but left his hands draped in Ronan’s and pressed against his lips. Maybe he could feel Ronan smile against his knuckles because he smiled back. “Maybe one more?”   
  
Adam tugged at Ronan’s hand, so he let him pick him up just to nestle himself in Adam’s neck, planting wet sloppy kisses all over his jaw and reveling in his laughter. Adam nudged him, so his mouth was against his neck and Ronan thought he might lose his mind. Never mind when the scrape of teeth hit his skin. Ronan ascended from this plane of existence.   
  
“What the hell Parrish, you tryna leave a mark?” The words came out easy from his lopsided smile, round on the edges and could do no harm. Adam pulled back and clapped a hand on his mouth anyways.    
  
“What the hell,” Adam murmured, and Ronan couldn’t tell if he was flushing deeper behind his hand.    
  
“I can’t wait to tell Gansey my boyfriend’s a biter. He’ll be so scandalized.” Ronan didn’t even realize what he said until he saw crinkles around Adam’s eyes, and his hand dropped to reveal an ear to ear smile.   
  
“Is that what we are? Boyfriends?” If Adam tried to tamp down the hope in his voice, he didn't do a great job. He was glowing brighter than any of the stupid plastic candles in the room. 

“If you’ll have me.” Ronan didn’t mean to whisper it as softly as he did. In his various fantasies of doing this sort of thing, he was at least a little more brave. Graceless with his sentiments, words never quite polished or at the right speed or volume, but something more than this. But here was Ronan Lynch, with a flicker of a voice and a tender hand to pull Adam’s away from his face just to hold and admire.    
  
“That might be the dumbest thing you’ve ever said,” Adam’s smile was a little crooked, smugness pulling at the corners. Adam’s fingers coiled around Ronan’s and squeezed with a pulse of a heartbeat. “I’ve always had you.”    
  
If Ronan didn’t have a strict quota of how many times he’d cry in a month, he thought he could find it in him to shed some tears. This future was one that filled his being with some vibrating excitement he thought he’d be swallowed whole. Every neuron felt active, like potential energy restless to expound. He felt tightly pressurized as if gravity was trying to make his insides collapse, and fuse into a brightly burning star in Adam’s light. A brand new star burning energy in Ronan’s heart, and he was overwhelmed at this life within him.

If Ronan had thought about it, he had found very few signs of life in him. This excited him. It wasn’t just being excited to have a future with Adam, but he was very excited for the person he was becoming.  
  
Ronan Lynch had not been excited to be himself in quite some time.   
  
“Alright, let's eat. I can’t take this much sappy bullshit in one sitting. You’re a bad influence.” Ronan kept his voice gruff and disinterested, but he rubbed the back of Adam’s hand with his thumb before finally letting him go so he could cram another eggroll into his mouth.   
  
“I told you, you’re really doing a number on your brand. You can’t blame me for this.”   
  
Adam’s phone vibrated next to his makeshift table, and his eyes flit to it due to the sheer stimulus. Ronan hummed around his food.  
  
“Pick it up,” He said with a mouth full of shrimp. “It’s probably Gansey, who the fuck else has your number.”   
  
Adam smiled at Ronan’s pitiful attempt at something polite and flipped his phone open to look at the pixelated bell icon with, sure enough, Gansey’s name glowing next to it.

He methodically tapped the buttons on his phone to open it. Ronan watched Adam scrunch his brow to concern, and then melted to this easy, coy face that Ronan was swiftly becoming well-acquainted with. 

“Can I tell him?” Adam asked with just a hint of a twang in his voice. “I know you were mostly joking before, but-”   
  
“Yeah.” The word was grounded with more confidence that he expected. “I don’t think we could keep it from him if we tried.”    
  


Not that Ronan wanted to keep this from Gansey, but he also wasn’t sure how to navigate this thing. Maybe he’d like a little more understanding before it became something so publically part of him.    
  
But Gansey was Gansey, and Ronan trusted him with so much of himself - and this  _ was _ him.    
  
“I’m telling him you’re at your boyfriend’s. I wanna see if he’s gonna freak out.”    
  
Before Ronan could even start to conjure a sassy remark, Adam’s phone glowed to life with a tinny chirping jingle.    
  
“I really gotta get you a real phone, this is tragic.” Ronan grimaced, and Adam rolled his eyes but didn’t protest, laughter twitching at the ends of a restrained smile.    
  
“Hello Gansey,” He said, making meaningful eye contact with Ronan. Adam pulled the phone from his ear so Ronan could hear Gansey frazzled banter between them.    
  
“Adam, what is going on, is every okay? Where are you? Where’s Ronan, do I need to-”   
  
Ronan sucked in a deep breath, ready to make some truly immature porn star caliber sex moans, before Adam sucker-punched him with another kiss, wet on his mouth. He traced Ronan’s lips with his tongue, and now Ronan didn’t have the capacity to make any noise whatsoever.   
  
“Everythings fine Gansey. I’m at home,” He smiled at Ronan, with the faintest dusting of sunset on his cheeks. “And Ronan’s with me.”    
  
There was a pause on the other end of the line.    
  
“I thought you said he was at his boyfriend’s?” Gansey sounded so puzzled, Ronan could hear his furrowed brows scrunched by the bridge of his glasses.   
  
“Clocks ticking, Dick. You’re being graded on this one.” Ronan sneered across the room, and Adam sputtered a chuckle. Gansey sighed so loud it came out as blown out static on Adam’s phone speaker.    
  
“He’s a nuisance and an awful influence.” Gansey admonished. “Well now I have to reschedule my panic attack, so I’ll leave you two be.” There was another question of a pause. “Ronan don’t call me a dad, because I want to say I'm happy for you two but I know you’re going to be an asshole about it. You deserve this.”    


_ This _ was so much. 

Ronan wondered if Gansey knew how far the galaxy of  _ this _ stretched, how it was ever expanding and Ronan would never understand it’s multitudes. He slid a hand into Adam’s, and he wondered if he could feel the glow of millions of possibilities in the pulse of their shared universe. The squeeze back said he did.

  
“Thanks, Dick,” Ronan said it with just a dollop of sarcasm on top. Just enough to try and convince himself that he wasn’t a sugar sculpture melting under his own affections.    
  
“Onwards and upwards.” Gansey signed off, with a beep. Adam put his phone down, busying his hand that wasn’t entwined with Ronan’s with a greedy bite of chicken. Ronan pushed Adam’s bangs from his face, cheeks squirrelish from food.   
  
“What a catch.” He teased, and Adam hummed as he elbowed him playfully.    
  
“You need to stop making out with me or I’m going to starve,” Adam teased and stabbed a shrimp with his fork. “Grab a beer and keep your mouth busy for a minute.”    
  
Ronan grunted something generally agreeable, planting one last kiss on Adam’s neck before he pried himself away to grab one of the sweating beer. There was a stark blue reflection in the side of the can, and Ronan followed it’s trail to his phone. Missed call from Gansey. Missed call from Declan. 12 Texts from K. 

Ronan frowned.    
  
“Ronan?” Adam asked. He must’ve been radiating unease because he hadn’t moved, still frowning down into his phone back turned to Adam. Ronan turned around, phone in his hand and tried to think of how to verbalize the shadowy static compressed in his gut. It was Adam’s turn to frown, solemn and understanding.    
  
“Are you gonna open them?” He asked, before grabbing a bite of rice. Ronan popped the tab of his beer and took a swing to regulate his body temperature. He hissed a satisfied sigh and decided to be honest with Adam, and himself.   
  
“Yeah. Not right now though.”   
  
“Are you gonna see him again?” Adam asked, and Ronan knew he was trying not to sound sad, but he had it hurt on his face like a paint splatter. It left Ronan sheepish, like he was the one who purposefully did that to Adam.    
  
“I’m not gonna be mad if you do.” The words sounded resigned. “You’re your own man. I just don’t trust him, is all.”    
  
“I probably will,” Ronan said, and it never hurt him so badly, to tell the truth. Kavinsky could track him down if he really wanted - even in his dreams. Statistically, it’d probably happen by the end of the week. Ronan was no good at math, though.    
  
He was also absolutely no good at resisting a street race, and Kavinsky knew every button and the amount of pressure he had to push to get him there.    
  
“I probably will,” Ronan repeated more grimly, frowning at the foam of his beer. He set it on the table and focused his full attention on Adam. “But I’ll try not to. If I’m busy with you, or Gansey, or Noah, or fuck, even Blue I can’t see him.”   
  
Adam smiled, small soft and unspeakable genuine. It made Ronan’s heart brave.    
  
“And I have a boyfriend who’s good with cars, teach me how to soup up the BMW, so I never lose a race and keep ‘em short. Because,” Ronan flit his eyes to the ground for a split second, just to collect all the courage being vulnerable took. Adam deserved every facet of his diamond heart, so he bared it in this dimly lit room to sparkle marvelously in the scattered light.    
  
“Because you’ll be waiting for me.”    
  
A rainbow of emotions washed over Adam’s face, color melting into something new so fast that Ronan couldn’t read it. Before he could even ask, he had two arms full of boy, clinging to him like a buoy in a sea of tea lights. He buried himself into Ronan’s neck, and he could feel every shaky breath hidden under his mop of hair. He didn’t pull away to speak, and Ronan had to translate the vibrations against his skin.    
  
“You better not hurt yourself, Ronan. Don’t keep me waiting.”    
  
Ronan lived his life fast. He constantly kept himself in momentum, but as fast as he went he rarely seemed to go anywhere, or find anything. He mostly found himself rather tired, and a little lost. He was so focused on getting away he wasn’t sure from  _ where _ or  _ what _ . He only focused on speed vs distance rather than trajectory, and it almost seemed ridiculous how he whipped past the path in front of him. He smiled so wide across his face his neglected muscles ached. He supposed it’d been a long time since he found the strength to smile, just for himself.

  
“I won’t,” He whispered. “Not anymore.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you endlessly to Ash for listening to me rant about Virginia magic for weeks, and Tori for not only introducing me to these books but also being THE best beta ever. 
> 
> And of course my nano squad for giving me motivation and generally being awesome and supportive!!!


End file.
